MICHAEL PALIN

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

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

Travelling, and being paid for it, is just great.

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'.

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

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.

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'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.

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.

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

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

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 have been unusually blessed in that I've been allowed to pursue two strands of a career that both delight me and seem to please the public.

Something about John Cleese was always very unsettled, I felt. There was always something else he wanted to do. He seemed constantly driven by this sense that there was a nirvana somewhere; some unique place where mind, body and soul would be utterly satisfied.

I don't seek discomfort. But, very often, you realise that what you fear is actually quite ephemeral; something's different, something's unfamiliar; therefore, it must be worse.

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

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

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

'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 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.

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.

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