Graham Chapman Quotes

It's sort of a mystery where ideas come from.

It's a question of trying to take down by dictation what's already there. I'm not making something, I'm trying to hear it.

My inspiration is endless; I can't define it. It is a constant flow and evolution. In general, I'm taking it from everywhere. People get nervous when they walk with me, as I'll see something and suddenly have to text it to myself.

My 'work' is about seeing not about ideas.

The process of creating is related to the process of dreaming although when you are writing you're doing it and when you're dreaming, it's doing you.

I enjoy looking beyond the obvious and look at the stories happening all around me - you kind of formulate things in your mind and get excited about them.

Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.

Some of the best ideas I get seem to happen when I'm doing mindless manual labor or exercise. I'm not sure how that happens, but it leaves me free for remarkable ideas to occur.

You don't actually have ideas; ideas have you.

No man's brain is so dull, and no man's eye so blind, that they cannot catch food for dreams.

My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.

I'm not such a fan of imagination. If you're alive to details, they oftentimes suggest a richer or deeper imaginative line than you would have imagined.

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

I'm always coming up with ideas that have been inspired by memories, everyday life and this and that and the other.

Feelings are at the basis of all ideas. First you have feelings, and then, through those sensations, it develops into ideas.

Ninety percent of my ideas come to me either when I'm reading or watching a show.

Everything inspires me; sometimes I think I see things others don’t.

Over the years I have discovered that ideas come through an intense desire for them; continually desiring, the mind becomes a watchtower on the lookout for incidents that may excite the imagination.

Some scientists find, or so it seems, that they get their best ideas when smoking; others by drinking coffee or whisky. Thus there is no reason why I should not admit that some may get their ideas by observing, or by repeating observations.

Art is as heavy as sorrow, as light as a breeze, as bright as an idea, as pretty as a picture, as funny as money, and as fugitive as fraud!

Common observation and a plain understanding is the source of all art.

Our ideas are the offspring of our senses; we are not more able to create the form of a being we have not seen, without retrospect to one we know, than we are able to create a new sense. He whose fancy has conceived an idea of the most beautiful form must have composed it from actual existence.

If you remember only one thing I've said, remember that an idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor. If you have never made a good metaphor, then you don't know what it's all about.

Dreams, though, are just one kind of inspiration - no more or less special than something in a newspaper article or from the world around you sparking inspiration.

Genius is only a superior power of seeing.