Zitat des Tages von Michael Palin:
Fame changes everything. When you're well-known, you're expected to be different. Some people assume you must have a yacht and four homes. Or that you're famous because you are 'A Decent Man'.
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.'
I can be me, and people seem quite happy with that.
There is barely a country in the world where you will be completely safe.
I'm not good at confrontation. I know my strengths. I like company. And I am not a great arguer... I do find it much easier talking to people I like about things we both like.
I know that we shall meet problems along the way, but I'd far rather see for myself what's going on in the world outside, than rely on newspapers, television, politicians and religious leaders to tell me what I should be thinking.
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.
I want people to know there is more to Somalia than looting and piracy.
I don't see why it should be remarkable that you can acquire a reputation for fairness and decency. Those are qualities shared by so many people. And the great majority of people I meet are decent people, just trying to navigate their way through the world without causing too much trouble.
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.
The trouble with travelling back later on is that you can never repeat the same experience.
I will die, but not retire.
I think some of the best modern writing comes now from travellers.
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.
One of the most important days of my life was when I learned to ride a bicycle.
People are still crazy about Python after twenty-five years, which I find hard to believe.
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.
If you had a successful TV show, people wanted to see you live. Promoters had had practice with pop groups, and 'Python' achieved a similar status. We also had lots of rock star fans - George Harrison, Pink Floyd, Robert Plant. Promoters saw that and liked it.
I always wanted to be an explorer, but - it seemed I was doomed to be nothing more than a very silly person.
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've never particularly liked travelling with large groups or being told where to go by somebody else. I prefer to find out for myself.
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.
Contrary to what the politicians and religious leaders would like us to believe, the world won't be made safer by creating barriers between people.
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.
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.
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.
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.
People look for patterns in everything. It's what keeps us sane, I suppose. I struggle to see any patterns in my life. I think I can understand depression a bit because of my sister. My own feelings of... I'm aware that, if you feel down, it can be strangely unrelated to circumstances around you. That's just the way life is.
Despite having seen a fair amount of the world, I still love travelling - I just have an insatiable curiosity and like looking out of a window.
'The Truth' is not meant to preach or point any fingers. It's meant to show that perhaps we should all avoid taking the moral high ground unless we have thought about things a bit more.
I am certainly more interested in interviewing than being interviewed. Sometimes you find yourself attacked from the start.
I've been lucky enough to stand on both poles, but the place that seemed the remotest to me was Butugychag, a former gulag in Siberia. It is completely cut off from the rest of the world.
Please don't ask which I enjoy more - acting or hosting - because I love them equally.
So many people had been asking me to write an autobiography, or threatening to write my biography without any input from me, that I thought I'd better tell my story before other people told it for me.
Travelling, and being paid for it, is just great.
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.