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" I love reading other people's diaries, especially someone like Virginia Woolf's - such a formidable woman that it's a revelation when she shows you a more vulnerable side of herself. "

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" There is nothing better than playing a scene with John Cleese or Maggie Smith. It's electric. But I don't think I'm the sort of person who needs to have an outer ego in order to produce something. I realised that through the travel programmes. "

Michael Palin

Ego

Nothing

Think

" The trouble with travelling back later on is that you can never repeat the same experience. "

" When I read profiles of myself, I sometimes think: 'I have spent my whole life struggling to understand my motivations and impulses, and I've never quite sorted them out.' "

" People say the most stupid things on the spur of the moment that they then have to retract. "

" I wanted to be an explorer, but gradually found the world had been explored and that there was nowhere left, really. Once they climbed Everest in 1953, when I was 10 years old, I thought, 'Well, that's pretty much it now.' But the idea of travelling and exploring and adventure was very strong. "

" I will die, but not retire. "

" The kids growing up is a separate strand to your life. However bad a day you've had, that's the most important thing, and you have to remember that. "

" I can be me, and people seem quite happy with that. "

Michael Palin

Happy

I Can

" I've never had a particular skill. I can't cook, dance, play an instrument, speak a foreign language. This used to worry me. I'd think, when I'm grown up, at 18, then I made it 21, it will be clear what role I should have in life. It never happened. I never signed on the dotted line as the sort of adult my father wanted. "

" People are still crazy about Python after twenty-five years, which I find hard to believe. "

" Armageddon is not around the corner. This is only what the people of violence want us to believe. The complexity and diversity of the world is the hope for the future. "

" I think you learn a lot about a country from its art. To me, it's part of the drama of life. It teaches you that there are places, moments and incidents in other cultures that genuinely have a life of their own. "

" I'd got over playing a character. People accepted who I was, and if I was incompetent and useless, they felt quite endeared to me. "

Michael Palin

People

Over

" I always wanted to be an explorer, but - it seemed I was doomed to be nothing more than a very silly person. "

" There is barely a country in the world where you will be completely safe. "

" I want people to know there is more to Somalia than looting and piracy. "

Michael Palin

Want

Than

" I would love to go to Iran. The island of Madagascar, everyone says is pretty exotic, or the wonderful Namibian desert. "

Michael Palin

Love

Iran

" I am restless. I don't mind leaving this comfortable, static life. I could live a year on my own in a remote village. "

" I've never particularly liked travelling with large groups or being told where to go by somebody else. I prefer to find out for myself. "

" I saw novelists as being admirable people and I thought... I thought... maybe, one day, I could be one of them. "

" There are people who travel because they want to push themselves to physical limits, people who walk across deserts or cycle across the Antarctic - like Ranulph Fiennes, who just does it because it's there. And then there are people like me, who are just genuinely curious about the world. "

" The human race should just slow down and think about what it is doing. "

" Hollywood was possible for a while! Why didn't I go along with it? Well, the other things that were pulling me back were more important. Being at home, being in the same marriage, these things enabled me to go off and travel in the first place. "

" When I'm travelling, I always take my little notebook and scribble things down as I watch them; I'm very much geared to everything that's happening. Whereas, the diary I keep is just about a record of a day I've spent. When I'm filming, I'm looking quite intensely at everything I see and trying to get my own eye on what we're going through. "

" I am certainly more interested in interviewing than being interviewed. Sometimes you find yourself attacked from the start. "

" I am not a great cook, I am not a great artist, but I love art, and I love food, so I am the perfect traveller. "

" I've been lucky to have made a number of travel programmes with the BBC, the object being to see places off the beaten track. As a result, I've often had a guide who's been able to show me things that you wouldn't see with a tour group. "

" You don't ask people about the immigration policies of the U.K. or their country's agricultural policy. Instead, you talk to them about the meal they're eating or their family, and from that you get the sense of another human being, someone we can all relate to. "

" I think some of the best modern writing comes now from travellers. "

" I was very bad at projecting my voice. I used to do this Gumby Flower Arranging sketch which involved shouting, and I could never do it right, and at one point my voice went completely. "