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I Want A Big 25-foot Pink Statue That Holds My Grave. Or I Also Might Like The Way The Indians Did It. They Hang You Up On The Top Of A Tree And The Birds Eat You. No, Really I Would Probably Choose Cremating.

-Jack Nicholson

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I Want A Big

Jack Nicholson

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I Want A Big 25-foot Pink Statue That Holds My Grave. Or I Also Might Like The Way The Indians Did It. They Hang You Up On The Top Of A Tree And The Birds Eat You. No, Really I Would Probably Choose Cremating.

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This Town Needs An Enema!

I Wasn't A Babe In The Woods. I'd Watched A Lot Of Stars, From James Dean To Brando, And I'd Seen Everybody Alive Work At Mgm. I Had A Certain Old-timer's Quality, Even Though I Was Young And New, And Drew On What I Believed Before I Made It.

I've Always Had Lots Of Friends Who Share My Perspective - I Guess You Could Say That I'm A Guy Who Aggressively Pursues His Happiness.

Lots Of Friends

I'm A Scamp. I Don't Deny It. I Like Myself.

I Don't Have Any Plugs Or Tucks But People Do What They Want. I Look At It As Mutilation.

I Don't Remember If I've Been Asked Seriously To Direct A Picture. I Understand That. I'm Very Good Business For People As An Actor And Perhaps They'd Rather I Didn't.

There Is One Thing I Know About Creative Conflict: Once My Argument Is Exhausted, I Am Not Going To Be Unhappy Whether It Moves In My Direction Or Away.

I Used To Be Very Quick, I Would Be Able To Leave The Room And Be Back Before You Noticed. When You Can't Do That Anymore You Need To Change The Style Of How You Do Things. But I'm Very Interested In Life And You Don't Want To Lose That.

I Usually Don't Get Too Bogged Down With My Personal Problems Because That's A One-way Street If You Get Yourself Into A Negative Frame Of Mind And Only See The Dark Side Of Life.

I Resist All Established Beliefs. My Religion Basically Is To Be Immediate, To Live In The Now. It's An Old Cliche, I Know, But It's Mine. I Envy People Of Faith. I'm Incapable Of Believing In Anything Supernatural. So Far, At Least. Not That I Wouldn't Like To. I Mean, I Want To Believe. I Do Pray. I Pray To Something ... Up There. I Have A God Sense. It's Not Religious So Much As Superstitious. It's Part Of Being Human, I Guess ... Do Unto Others: How Much Deeper Into Religion Do We Really Need To Go?

I Envy People Of Faith. I'm Incapable Of Believing In Anything Supernatural.

It's A Slight Stretch Of The Imagination But Most People Are Alike In Most Ways So I've Never Had Any Trouble Identifying With The Character That I'm Playing.

Staying Together Is A Challenge. We All Have To Accept Qualities In Other People That Aren't Always Exactly What We Want Or Need.

With My Sunglasses On, I'm Jack Nicholson. Without Them, I'm Fat And 60.

When We Make Mistakes They Call It Evil. When God Makes Mistakes They Call It Nature!

Making Mistakes

When It's Over For A Woman, It's Over. You're Not Getting An Appeal.

I Know I Can Act. There Aren't Too Many Other Jobs I Know How To Do

There's No Point Dwelling On What Might Or Could Have Been. You Just Have To Go Forward.

I'll Tell You One Thing: Don't Ever Give Anybody Your Best Advice, Because They're Not Going To Follow It.

A Lot Of People Manage To Find Common Ground And Not Let Disagreements Or Tensions Build Up And Destroy Them, And Other People Break Up Or Get Divorced. I Don't Think Anything Is Ever Going To Change That Situation. You Simply Try To Find An Accommodation And An Understanding With Another Person And Work From There.

I'm Very Fortunate In The Sense That Outside Of Cohabitating Relationships And So Forth, I've Always Got On Just As Well With Women.

The Way I Reacted To 9/11 Was I Decided I Didn't Want To Do Any Movies That Are Sad Or Critical. I Decided I Didn't Want To Make My Living Depressing People Or Making Them Go Home Sick, So I Just Decided I Wanted To Do Comedy For A While And Study It For A While. It Doesn't Mean Everybody Should Do That, But That Was My Reaction.

Having Kids Is The Most Innately Positive Thing That Anyone Can Do.

Being Pigeonholed Is The Death Of All Actors.

When You Use A Dialect, You Worry That The People You're Imitating Will Think You're Making Fun Of Them.

There Are Major Influences On Us That People Are Not Aware Of. There Are Big Lies That Nobody's Willing To Discuss.

When You Look At Life Retrospectively You Rarely Regret Anything That You Did, But You Might Regret Things That You Didn't Do.

I Don't Want To Direct A Movie As Good As Antonioni, Or Kubrick, Or Polanski, Or Whoever. I Want It To Be My Own. I Think I've Got The Seed Of It And, What's More, That I Can Make Movies That Are Different And Informed By My Taste.

There's A Tacit Agreement Today That The White Male Is The Only Legitimate Target For Any And All Satire, Criticism, And So Forth. And We Pretty Much Just Accept It.

I Have A Lot Of Vanity.

When I Am Cast In A Movie Where I Feel That The Woman's Part Is More Interesting, I Usually Start Thinking About Spencer Tracy And Fred Astaire. They Seem To Be The Most Clear Actors When Working With Women.

I Goddamn Near Lost My Nose. And I Like It. I Like Breathing Through It.

Hiding Something

Once You've Been Really Bad In A Movie, There's A Certain Kind Of Fearlessness You Develop.

You Can't Say, "i'm Gonna Make A Hit Movie." You're As Dead As You Could Be.

I Think The Greeks Invented Sports As An Antidote To Philosophy.

If You Get An Impulse In A Scene, No Matter How Wrong It Seems, Follow The Impulse. It Might Be Something And If It Ain't - Take Two!

When They Say I'm A Great Actor, I Close My Ears Because It's Not Good For You To Think That Way.

I Didn't Know That My Sister Was Really My Mother Until I Was Thirty-seven Years Old. But Life Has Taught Me That There Have Been A Lot Of Things That I Didn't Know.

I'm The Age Where We Didn't Have Television As Kids. So When I Saw My Nieces And Nephews Watching Howdy Doody, Kukla, Fran And Ollie, And So Forth, I Thought The World Had Gone Mad.

I'm Not A Power Person. I Like Everyone To Be On An Equal Footing.

I've Never Been Able To Say I've Been Influenced By A List Of Artists I Like Because I Like Thousands And Thousands And I've Been Influenced In Some Way By All Of Them.

There Is No Way You Can Get People To Believe You On Screen If They Know Who You Really Are Through Television.

I Hate Giving Advice, Because People Won't Take It.

Frankly, I Got Into The Movies Because I Like The Movies A Lot.

I Began To Think That The Finest Modern Writer Was The Screen Actor. This Was In The Spirit Of The Fifties Where A Very Antiliterary Literature Was Emerging - Kenneth Patchen And Others. I Kind Of Believed What Nietzsche Said, That Nothing Not Written In Your Blood Is Worth Reading; It's Just More Pollution Of The Airwaves.

I'm An Actor Who They Said Was Wrinkled And Balding And Everything Else When I Was In My Early 30's. Most Of The People Who Wrote That Who Thought They Were Younger Than Me Are Now Bald And Wrinkled.

I Believe In Making All Movies At Their Most Reasonable. That I Get A Lot Of Money As An Actor Is Because Nobody Else Will Get It If I Don't.

I Suppose I Can Do More For A Script As An Actor Than As A Writer - In The Film Sense.

There's Probably No One Who Understands Method Acting Better Academically Than I Do, Or Actually Uses It More In His Work. But It's Funny - Nobody Really Sees That. It's Perception Versus Reality, I Suppose.

I'm The Last Guy In The World To Feel Overlooked By The Academy.

You Look At Someone Long Enough, You Discover Their Humanity.

Good As It Gets

Believe It Or Not, I Supported Richard Nixon On The Issue Of Presidential Privilege. How Could Anyone Conceive Of Being The President Of The United States And Think That Every Single Thing That You Say Or Do Can Become A Part Of The Public Record? It Just Seems So Stupid To Me.

And This, Incidentally, Is My Thumbnail Sketch Of American Marriage: A Woman Sees A Man; She Likes Him. Now She Jumps On This Thing And Rides It To Some Kind Of Standstill. Then She Changes It And Trains It, And To The Exact Degree That She's Able To Do This, She Disrespects Him.

I Assume Most Of The Characters I Play Are Exactly Like Me.

It [tv] Is The Cancer Of Film. It's Why People Can't Be Educated To Film. In The Late '60s, We Expected To See A Movie Or Two Every Week And Be Stimulated, Excited And Inspired. And We Did. Every Week After Week. Antonioni, Goddard, Truffaut - This Endless List Of People. And Then Comes Television And Home Video. I Know How To Work Exactly For The Big Screen, But It Doesn't Matter What I Think About The Art Of Movie-making Versus Tv.

Through All Permutations And Youthful Poetry, I Came To Believe That The Film Actor Was The Great "literateur" Of His Time.

Beer, It's The Best Damn Drink In The World.

In Other Words, I Wouldn't Like To Be An Actor If I Could Only Be Real. I Like To Get Wild, Behaviorally Wild, And It's Crazy To Think Of Any Form Where It's Just One Way.

Son, We Live In A World That Has Walls And Those Walls Have To Be Guarded By Men With Guns. Who's Gonna Do It? You!?

I've Spent More Time Playing Golf Than Anything Else The Last 18 Years. Just Wanted To Be An 80s-shooter. Got There, Too.

I'm Irish. I Think About Death All The Time.

Ireland And The Irish

If I Were An Arab-american, I Would Insist On Being Profiled. This Is Not The Time For Civil Rights. There Are Larger Issues For Americans.

You Know, I Think I Understand What You're Like Now. You're Very Beautiful And You Think Men Are Only Interested In You Because You're Beautiful. But You Want Them To Be Interested In You Because You're You. The Problem Is, Aside From All That Beauty, You're Not Very Interesting. You're Rude, You're Hostile, You're Sullen, You're Withdrawn... Oh, I Know- You Want Someone To Look Past All That At The Real Person Underneath. But The Only Reason Anyone Would Bother To Look Past All That Is Because You're Beautful. Ironic, Isn't It? In An Odd Way You're Your Own Problem.

I Don’t Want To Be A Product Of My Environment. I Want My Environment To Be A Product Of Me.

Age Is The First Limitation On Roles That I've Ever Had To Encounter, And I Hit That Awhile Ago.

I Respect The Social Graces Enormously. How To Pass The Food. Don't Yell From One Room To Another. Don't Go Through A Closed Door Without A Knock. Open The Doors For The Ladies. All These Millions Of Simple Household Behaviors Make For A Better Life. We Can't Live In Constant Rebellion Against Our Parents - It's Just Silly. I'm Very Well Mannered. It's Not An Abstract Thing. It's A Shared Language Of Expectations.

I'm Not Hard To Get Along With.

I Would Never Complain About My Life, Even Though I Really Would Like To Have A Mate.

If You Want Your Freedom, You Have To Be Willing To Work Hard To Exercise It.

I Like To Not Care That Much About Criticism, But I Do Care About It.

I Think That's What Distinguishes Schmidt, Really. In The Movies Now, So Much Of What Is Appealing To An Audience Is The Dramatic Or Has To Do With Science Fiction, And Schmidt Is Simply Human. There's No Melodrama; There's No Device, It's Just About A Human Being.

With Comedy, You Have To Do It Right. In A Drama, There's A Lot Of Different Ways To Succeed In A Moment. But Comedy Comes From Reality. You Can't Try To Be Funny.

Before I Moved Into The Mainstream Of American Movies, I Wrote A Script As An Experiment. I Wanted To Get Very Far Away From The Clichés About The Three-act Play - Structure, Development.

I Have Never Felt Brutalized As An Actor. Many Actors Do, Some Times, But I've Never Had That Experience. If I'm Not Happy With The Balance, I Just Won't Work With That Person Again.

Early On, If I Was Alone Two Three Nights In A Row, I'd Start Writing Poems About Suicide.

Because Of The Way The Business Is Structured, I Have Sometimes Turned Down Scripts That I Might Otherwise Have Accepted Had I Known Who Was Directing Them.

Once You've Started A Film You Don't Become A Wet Noodle. You Must Have That Conflictual Interface Because You Don't Know, And They Don't Know. It's Through Conflict That You Come Out With Something That Might Be Different, Better Than Either Of You Thought To Begin With.

It's Difficult For People Sometimes To Recognise When They're Happy. People Sometimes Seem To Me To Be Afraid To Be Happy.

I Don't Want People To Know What I'm Actually Like. It's Not Good For An Actor.

We Learn How To Kiss, Or To Drink, Talk To Our Buddies-all The Things That You Can't Really Teach In Social Studies Or History-we All Learn Them At The Movies.

You Have To Do Every Movie One At A Time. Trilogy Is Contrary To This Ideology. My Nightmare Is To Wake Up And Find Myself The Host Of A Tv Series.

The Minute That You're Not Learning I Believe You're Dead.

I Would Never Say, "i'm Retired." I Believe If I Decided To Just Not Work, In Six Months Everybody Would Just Forget Whether You Were Working Or Not.

Just Let The Wardrobe Do The Acting.

I Love The Company Of People. I Always Have And Always Will, It Comes With My Family. But Earlier In Life I Might Have Got A Little Nervous If I Was Alone For A Day Or Two In A Row. I Might Think, "where Are They?" Now, I Just Go On Doing Naturally What I Do.

If I Go Into A Restaurant There's A Very Good Chance That I'm Going To Spend My Time Being The Mayor. If I Want To Have A Good Time, I'm Happier Having Dinner Here.

There Was A Period When I Just Wanted To Make What I Wanted To Make And I Didn't Care What Lie I Had To Tell.

It's Not Like I'm Starved For Company - I Have A Few Very Good Lady Friends - But There's Only A Certain Amount Of Times A Woman Wants To See You And Never Go Out For Dinner.

I Have Never Lied To You, I Have Always Told You Some Version Of The Truth.

I Look For A Director With A Script He Likes A Lot, But I'm Probably After The Directors More Than Anything.

Everybody's Old Enough For A Beer, Ain't That Right, Mule?

In The Real World There's An After-effect Of Disappointment If You Lose An Argument. But If, To Begin With, You're Set Up Not To Have This Particular Autonomy, Then You're Not Disappointed.

My Point Of View, While Extremely Cogent, Is Unpopular. . . . That The Repressive Nature Of The Legalities Vis-a-vis Drugs Are Destroying The Legal System And Corrupting The Police System.

When I Was In High School, I Earned The Pimple Award And Every Other Gross-out Award.

I Mean, It's Real Hard To Be Free When You Are Bought And Sold In The Marketplace.

Everyone Pretty Much Acknowledges That He's The Man, And I Still Feel That Underrates Him.

My Only Emotion Is Gratitude, Literally, For My Life.

I Did Not Want To Be Coming Off The Stage At The Mercy Of What Somebody Else Told Me I Did.

Comedy Is Much Harder, It's A Lot More Exacting. You Can't Just Be Real And You Can't Just Use The Same Kind Of Techniques You Use To Fill Up A Regular Scene.

Ok, The Director Makes The Movie. But Some Movies Can't Get Made Without Someone Like Me In Them.

I Have Given A Name To My Pain, And It Is Batman.

For An Actor, Style Comes Last. You First Have To Implement The Whole Thing, But Your Style Comes From The Subconscious, Which Is The Best Part An Actor Brings To His Work.

I Come From The Lynchs Of Sligo. You Know, I Went There, But I Looked In The Phone Book And There Are Nine Million Lynches In Sligo.

I Never Thought In Terms Of Typing Myself, Because I Wasn't That Successful. After An Actor Has Done A Few Pieces Of Work, His Naïveté Is The Part Of The Craft He Has To Nurture Most.

A Star On A Movie Set Is Like A Time Bomb. That Bomb Has Got To Be Defused So People Can Approach It Without Fear.

At 55 I Said The Probability Is I Won't Have Another Relationship. I Just Didn't Want To Start Another Family. Between My Own Bizarre Criteria And Taste And The Fact That I'm Not Available For Many Things I Thought It Was Unlikely. Once You Know The Science About It, I Don't Think Anybody Should Consider Being Committed To A Real Eternal Relationship Until You're Through Something Called The Infatuation Circle.

Well, A Younger Woman Is A Type, But Not Necessarily A Type For Me. And What Is A Younger Woman? I Mean, I'm Pretty Old. Almost Everyone Is Younger.

Do You Think God Knew What He Was Doing When He Created Woman?

Sometimes A Bit Of Distance Can Be Very Healthy. You Can Go Away By Yourself On A Trip And Come Back Very Glad To Be With Your Partner Because You've Cleared Your Head Out Of All The Negativity.

I Take Responsibility For My Successes As Well As My Failures. But When I Look At My Professional Mistakes, I'm Always Left With The Feeling That Maybe I Should Have Done More.

The Fuel For The Sports Fan Is The Ability To Have Private Theories.

I Love Discourse. I'm Dying To Have My Mind Changed. I'm Probably The Only Liberal Who Read Treason, By Ann Coulter. I Want To Know, You Understand? I Like Listening To Everybody. This To Me Is The Elixir Of Life.

Dissembling Is A Common Tool Of The Anger Junkie.

You Make Me Want To Be A Better Man.

There Were Points In My Life Where I Felt Oddly Irresistible To Women. I'm Not In That State Now And That Makes Me Sad.

I Know I Can Act. There Aren't Too Many Other Jobs I Know How To Do. Financially, I've Lost Money And Made Money, But I Know My Way Around Financially. I've Been Too Many Places. I'm Like The Bad Penny.

I Love Working With Women Directors. They Don't Mind Making You Cute.

I'm Definitely Still Wild At Heart.

A Lot Of People In The Middle Of Their Lives Have A Secret Yearning For More Romance.

You Can Follow The Action, Which Gets You Good Pictures. You Can Follow Your Instincts, Which Will Probably Get You In Trouble. Or, You Can Follow The Money, Which Nine Times Out Of Ten Will Get You Closer To The Truth.

We Live, We Die, And The Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Round.

I Wanted To Be The Best Actor Possible. I Worked Very Hard At The Craft Of It.

Time Keeps No Measure When True Friends Are Parted, No Record Day By Day; The Sands Move Not For Those Who, Loyal-hearted, Friendship's Firm Laws Obey.

I Always Knew There Wasn't Going To Be Anybody To Help Me And Emotionally Support Me, That Whatever I Did I'd Have To Do On My Own.

The Stage Has A Certain Discipline. But The Ultimate Standard Is More Exacting In Film, Because You Have To See Yourself And You Are Your Own Toughest Critic.

How Would I Like To Be Seen? Very Endearing, Charming, Intelligent, Handsome.

Many Actors Will Try Something Different Once, But If It Isn't A Box Office Success They'll Never Do It Again. In My Opinion, There's No Point In Going On With This Job If You Do The Same Thing Over And Over Again.

Charlize Theron And Cate Blanchett Are Very Good Actresses.

I've Always Fought Against Being Controlled And Manipulated And Stomped Upon By Circumstances.

There Are Many Directors In The Middle Range Who've Made Mostly Successful Pictures, And Then There Are A Few Great Directors Who've Had Some Successes And Some Failures. I Suppose My Life Would Be Smoother If I Wasn't Almost Totally Enamored Of The Latter Category.

Everybody Said I Was Good, But Being Known And Not Having A Big Film Success Is Almost Tougher Than Being Completely New. It Just Kind Of Turned My Life Around And Was Definitely A Highlight.

I Don't Know If This Is A True Statistic, But I Heard Somewhere That There Are Three Times As Many Single Women Over Forty As Single Men. That's What We Got From The Women's Movement. The Chickens Have Come Home To Roost.

My Whole Career Strategy Has Been To Build A Base So That I Could Take The Roles I Want To Play. I'd Hate To Think That A Shorter Part Might Not Be Available Because I Was Worried About My Billing.

I Would Never Want To Vilify Somebody Who Considered Abortion Murder. I Was An Illegitimate Child Myself. I May Not Have Existed Today.

In My Last Year Of School, I Was Voted Class Optimist And Class Pessimist. Looking Back, I Realize I Was Only Half Right.

I Want A Big 25-foot Pink Statue That Holds My Grave. Or I Also Might Like The Way The Indians Did It. They Hang You Up On The Top Of A Tree And The Birds Eat You. No, Really I Would Probably Choose Cremating.

Once I Got Started Acting I Loved It.

I Was Particularly Proud Of My Performance As The Joker. I Considered It A Piece Of Pop Art.

The Most Difficult Thing About Being Well Known? Getting Out Of A Hotel Room At 4am.

I Am In An Age Group Where It Is Rude To Discuss Money, And Now It Is All Anyone Cares About.

I Just Like Art. I Get Pure Pleasure From It. I Have A Lot Of Wonderful Paintings, And Every Time I Look At Them I See Something Different.

[on The Birth Of His Son After Having Had Two Daughters] I Finally Got It Right.

You Are More Thoughtful Because You Don't Act As Quickly Anymore. When I Turned 70 It Was The First Time I Felt Young For My Age. Fifty Dropped On Me Like A Ton Of Bricks - There Is Something About That Number - But When 70 Came Along I Felt Good About It.

He [castro] Is A Genius. We Spoke About Everything.

If You Think You’re Attractive, You’re Always Attractive.

I Was Invited To Join The Mgm Cartoon Department. But If I'd Started Work In Animation I'd Have Had To Take A Cut In Salary, So I Didn't.

I Don't Even Own A Cell Phone.

Because You Know, Down Deep In My Heart, When All Is Said And Done, I Still Live Under The Illusion That Basically People Think Of Me As An Up-and-coming Young Actor.

A Man Needs A Private Life. With No Ability To Have A Private Life, One Thing Leads To Another, And Before You Know It We Have Bill And Monica. We Need To Get Real About Things. Humans Are Humans. Why Should We Expect More?

Never Rub Another Man's Rhubarb.

Comedy Is More Difficult. You Can Look At Scenes When You're Doing A Drama Like, maybe It Works, But In Comedy, When You're Doing It, Either It Works Or It Doesn't. You Have To Keep Doing It Until It Does, And The Requirement Is More.

I Resist All Established Beliefs. My Religion Basically Is To Be Immediate, To Live In The Now.

Live In The Now

We Are Going As Fast As We Can As Soon As We Can. We're In A Race Against Time, Until We Run Out Of Money.

Race Against Time

I've Always Thought Basketball Was The Best Sport, Although It Wasn't The Sport I Was Best At. It Was Just The Most Fun To Watch.

What's Beautiful Is All That Counts, Pal. That's All That Counts.

A Lot Of People Can't Remember Things Because They Weren't Actually There To Begin With - They Don't Take It All In.

I Don't Believe In God Now. I Can Still Work Up An Envy For Someone Who Has A Faith. I Can See How That Could Be A Deeply Soothing Experience.

I Can't Hit On Women In Public Any More. I Didn't Decide This; It Just Doesn't Feel Right At My Age.

People Who Speak In Metaphors Should Shampoo My Crotch.

I Only Take Viagra When I'm With More Than One Woman.

I'm Fairly Well Off. I Can't Poor-mouth That Away From People's Sensibilities About Me, Which Is Something I Worry About As An Actor. But It Would Be Real Stupid Of Me To Do Something For The Money.

Kids Are Life's Only Guaranteed, Bona Fide Upside Surprise.

Take Caution In Your Tone, Commander. I'm A Fair Man, But This -- Heat Is Making Me Absolutely Crazy.

I Don't Have Any Fear Of Intimacy, But Rather Thrive On It, Which Is Rare In A Public Person.

I'd Prefer If People Had No Impressions Of Me. As A Kid, I Had To Tell My Own Family, "please, Just Don't Talk About Me!" Because They Always Got It Wrong. Always. I Just Didn't Want Them To Tell Anyone Anything About Me.

I Learned A Long Time Ago In Hollywood That The Only Person I Should Vote For Is Myself.

I Have Mainly Been Interested In Acting. I Think It's A Great Job, A Fine Way To Live Your Life.

The Only Way To Break A Bad Habit Was To Replace It With A Better Habit.

Men Dominate Because Of Physicality, And Thus They Have Mercy Where Women Do Not.

I Have To Keep Myself In Check When I Go To The Kids' Sports Events. I Sit Waaay In The Back. I Make Sure I Don't Do Too Much Cheering, You Know What I Mean? I'm Still Not Quite Adjusted To This Modern School Of Thought: Oh, It Doesn't Matter Who Wins. I'm Not All The Way There Yet, But I Accept It From The Back Row.

Most Of The Early Part Of An Actor's Career, You Do The Jobs You Get.

I Used To Think That One Of The Great Signs Of Security Was The Ability To Just Walk Away.

I'm Very Contra My Constituency In Terms Of Abortion Because I'm Positively Against It. I Don't Have The Right To Any Other View. My Only Emotion Is Gratitude, Literally, For My Life.

I Don't Believe That Relationships Are Fixed Things. People Are Necessarily Complex And Confused Beings. We Don't Always Do The Right Thing, Say The Right, And Behave The Same Way Or The Way We Always Want To Behave.

Children Give Your Life A Resonance That It Can't Have Without Them.

I Love Women Who Have A Strong Sense Of Themselves Because I Know I Have A Pretty Good Idea Of What I Want Out Of Life And I Like To Be Around Other People Who Are Also Pretty Secure. It Just Makes Things Easier.

One Of My School Friends' Parents Owned A Minigolf Course, And A Bunch Of Us Kids Would Play There All Day In The Summer. Two-under Deuces Was A Good Score.

If Men Are Honest, Everything They Do And Everywhere They Go Is For A Chance To See Women.

Decent People Shouldn't Live Here. They'd Be Happier Some Place Else.

Have You Ever Danced With The Devil In The Pale Moonlight?

It Always Bothered Me When People Came Off Stage And Were Told How Great They Were. They Weren't, Really, In My Opinion. It Was Then I Started Thinking That, Contrary To Conventional Wisdom, Film Was The Artful Medium For The Actor, Not The Stage.

I've Never Lost A Friend Over Work. I Come From A Small-town Environment And I Remember My Childhood Impressions That, If You Were A Conniver Or A Fink Or Whatever, Everybody Knew About It And You Were A Louse For The Rest Of Your Life. So I Never Lost Those Values In Some Way.

Rest Of Your Life

Liberalism Is The Right To Question Without Being Called A Heretic. That's What America Did For The World.

I Think It's Good If A Man Gives A Woman Some Time To Herself Because I Think We All Need That And We Can All Benefit From That. It Doesn't Imply A Rejection Of The Other Person, Just A Sense That Because We Do Have Our Separate Identities, Sometimes You Have To Be Less Involved In Another Person's Life Or Need To Have That Other Person Be Less Involved In Your Life.

You Can Call Me Joker. And As You Can See, I'm A Lot Happier.

I'm A New Wave Baby, So I Got Very Stimulated By Foreign Film.

I'm Against Cronyism, And I Had To Learn That Early On. Like, I Don't Have An Entourage, Because I Saw The Negative Effects Of Those Things.

When I Come Up Against A Director Who Has A Concept That I Don't Agree With, Or Maybe I Just Haven't Thought Of It Or Whatever, I'd Be More Prone To Go With Them Than My Own Because I Want To Be Out Of Control As An Actor, I Want Them To Have The Control, Otherwise It's Going To Become Predictably My Work, And That's Not Fun.

I Am A Person Who Is Trained To Look Other People In The Eye. But I Can't Look Into The Eyes Of Everyone Who Wants To Look Into Mine; I Can't Emotionally Cope With That Kind Of Volume. Sunglasses Are Part Of My Armor.

It's Very Easy To Go Down, So Always Live Up. Incline Yourself Upward.

For A Long Time, I Was Afraid To Be Alone. I Had To Learn How To Be Alone. And There Are Still Times When I Think, Uh-oh! I Gotta Talk To Somebody Here Or I'm Gonna Go Crazy! But I Like To Be Alone. Now I Do. I Really Do. There's A Big Luxury In Solitude.

There's Only Two People In Your Life You Should Lie To... The Police And Your Girlfriend.

Even In The Most Sophisticated Person, It Is The Primitive Eye That Watches The Film.

The Camera Photographs What's There.

There's A Period Just Before You Start A Movie When You Start Thinking, I Don't Know What In The World I'm Going To Do. It's Free-floating Anxiety. In My Case, Though, This Is Over By Lunch The First Day Of Shooting.

You Can't Handle The Truth!

Women Are Sort Of Like Motorcycle Gangs With Me. They Get Really Shy And Polite. I Don't Know Why.

Motorcycle Gangs

I Don't Play Golf Competitively. I Tell Everybody That I Cheat So They Won't Gamble With Me. That's Why You Can't Watch Football. Everybody's Gambling. They Don't Want To Watch The Game; They Watch The Spread.

I'm In The Movie Business; It's Meant To Be Very Cutthroat. But You Won't Find Anybody That Ever Says I Cheated Them Or Manipulated Them.

I Thought Of Myself As Part Of The General Filmmaking Effort. And As My Scope Broadened, I Began To Think About Directing. I Wanted To Be The Guy Who Got To Say Whether The Dress Is Red Or Blue.

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