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There Has Long Been A Bemoaning Of The Lack Of Opportunity To Make Films That Are Anything But Explosions Or The Ladling On The Pea Soup Or Whatever You Want To Call It. You Can Hardly Make A Movie Today Where Somebody Isn't A Murderer Or A Rapist Or, If It's A "fried Green Tomatoes" That Isn't Some Wistful Thing On This, That Or The Other Thing.

-Jack Nicholson

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There Has Long Been

Jack Nicholson

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There Has Long Been A Bemoaning Of The Lack Of Opportunity To Make Films That Are Anything But Explosions Or The Ladling On The Pea Soup Or Whatever You Want To Call It. You Can Hardly Make A Movie Today Where Somebody Isn't A Murderer Or A Rapist Or, If It's A "fried Green Tomatoes" That Isn't Some Wistful Thing On This, That Or The Other Thing.

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

The First Role I Ever Played I Had The Lead And It's Pretty Much Stayed That Way, Though People Take Great Relish In Calling Me A Character Actor, Which I Am. There Are A Lot Of Short Parts I Could Play, But I Only Do Them When They Are Like This ("a Few Good Men"), Central To The Idea Of The Movie.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Human Beings Are Always Going To Find Interesting Ways Of Making A Mess Of Their Lives. It's Human Nature.

I Think The Greeks Invented Sports As An Antidote To Philosophy. In Sports There Are Absolute Rules. It's Not, What About This? What About That? Either You're Safe Or You're Out. It's Ten Yards Or It's Not. It's In The Hoop Or Out Of The Hoop. It's Certain.

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.

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.

Never Rub Another Man's Rhubarb.

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

I'm Certainly Not As Tough As People Think. I'm Not A Fighter And So Forth. I'd Just As Soon Go Home.

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.

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

Good As It Gets

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

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

Ireland And The Irish

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.

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

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

Making Mistakes

Well, A Girlfriend Once Told Me Never To Fight With Anybody You Don't Love.

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

Live In The Now

If You're Going To Write, Write One Poem All Your Life, Let Nobody Read It, And Then Burn It. This Is Very Young Thinking, I Confess, But It Is The Seminal Part Of My Life.

This Town Needs An Enema!

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.

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

Being Pigeonholed Is The Death Of All Actors.

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.

I Just Know That Sameness, Repetition, And Conceptualizing Are The Acting Craft's Adversaries, And It Seems More Intelligent To Start Off Within A Framework Where Those Things Are, To Some Degree, Taken Out Of Your Hands.

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

I've Always Understood Money; It's Not A Big Mystical Thing To Me.

Almost Everybody's Happy To Be A Fool For Love.

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.

I Guess This Proves There Are As Many Nuts In The Academy As Anywhere Else.

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.

Freedom In Every Sense But Primarily Political Sense, A Rise In Repression That Stems From A Repression Of Sexuality. It's Aids, It's Herpes, It's This, It's That. Ask Any Saloon Owner What's Happened To Social Life In America In The Past 12 Years And They'll Tell You It's A Different World And These People Are Strongly Misinformed By The Media, Peer Pressure.

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

Motorcycle Gangs

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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.

Acting Is Everybody's Favorite Second Job.

Just Because You're Perfectionist Doesn't Mean You're Perfect.

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.

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

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

I Have A Lot Of Vanity.

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

Charlize Theron And Cate Blanchett Are Very Good Actresses.

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

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

Played Tennis For Years. But You Can't Improve At Tennis After You're 50. You Get To Be In Your 40s, And Suddenly You're A Doubles Player.

I'm Such A Perfectionist. I Always Feel Overpraised Or Whatever. In The Abstract, I Know I'm A Good Person, A Good Professional. But It's Nice To Be Noticed A Little Bit, Ain't It?

I Love Writing, But I Stopped Because I Felt I Was More Effective Approaching Filmmaking From A Different Vantage Point.

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

As A Means Of Supporting Experiential Element In Film, Once I Begin To Work On A Particular Movie I Consider Myself To Be The Tool Of The Director.

Million Bucks Won't See You Through A Major Health Crisis.

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.

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

There Are Short Parts That I As An Actor Am Very Right For. Or I Just Like The Part. Or You Need Someone Like Me For The Movie. By That I Don't Mean At The Box Office, I Mean In The Execution Of The Material.

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.

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.

People Who Speak In Metaphors Should Shampoo My Crotch.

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

I Sort Of Understood That When I First Started: That You Shouldn't Repeat A Success. Very Often You're Going To, And Maybe The First Time You Do, It Works. And You Love It. But Then You're Trapped.

Congratulations

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

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 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.

The Blues And Jazz Will Live Forever... So Will The Delta And The Big Easy.

You Make Me Want To Be A Better Man.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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 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 Don't Even Own A Cell Phone.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Once I Got Started Acting I Loved It.

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

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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!?

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.

I'm Not Hard To Get Along With.

I Eat Breakfast 300 Yards From 4000 Cubans, Who Are Trained To Kill Me, So Don't Think For One Second That You Can Come Down Here, Flash Your Badge And Make Me Nervous.

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

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

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

Hiding Something

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 Never Had A Policy About Marriage. I Got Married Very Young In Life And I Always Think In All Relationships, I've Always Thought That It's Counterproductive To Have A Theory On That.

I'm Definitely Still Wild At Heart.

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.

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.

Life Doesn't Have To Be About Finding Osama Bin Laden Or Becoming The President Of The United States. Life Is About The Little Things, Which Is One Of The Things You Learn When You Get Older.

I Mean, It's Real Hard To Be Free When You Are Bought And Sold In The Marketplace. Of Course, Don't Ever Tell Anybody That They're Not Free, 'cause Then They're Gonna Get Real Busy Killin' And Maimin' To Prove To You That They Are. Oh Yeah, They're Gonna Talk To You And Talk To You And Talk To You About Individual Freedom. But They See A Free Individual, It's Gonna Scare 'em.

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!

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

My Motto Is: More Good Times.

I've Always Had An Urge To Feed My Need To Have Fun And Feel Free. I Don't See Any Interesting Alternatives.

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

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

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.

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

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

I Think Of A Man And I Take Away Reason And Accountability.

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.

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

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

Financially, I've Lost Money And Made Money, But I Know My Way Around Financially.

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

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

I Want My Kids To Have A Deep, Inner Feeling That It's Alright To Be Happy, That You Don't Have To Be Constantly Manufacturing Problems That You Don't Really Have.

I'd Give My Goddamned Soul For Just A Glass Of Beer.

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

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

As An Actor, I Want To Give In To The Collaboration With The Director Because I Don't Want My Work To Be All The Same. The More This Can Be Done With Comfort, The More Variety My Work Has Had.

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

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 Certainly Knew My Father. He Just Didn't Happen To Be My Biological Father.

Biological Fathers

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.

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.

I'm Content With The Fact That I Made A Decent Effort. That's What I've Always Worried About: That I Wouldn't Try Hard Enough.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

No Issue Is More Compelling Than The Air We Breathe, Be It Hot Or Cold, Be It Hawk Or Human.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

That's What I Like About The Movie Business: You're Always In Contact With Wonderful And Interesting People.

The Average Celebrity Meets, In One Year, Ten Times The Amount Of People That The Average Person Meets In His Entire Life.

The Less People Know About Me, The Easier My Job Is.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

I Think Human Beings Have A Basic Instinct To Be Free And Explore Their World In Their Own Way. I've Always Been Driven To Look At Life As Something Which We Should Try To Plunge Into Rather Than Sit Back. You Have To Be Able To Have Fun And Keep Creating A Sense Of Excitement To How You Approach The World.

It's The Post-literate Generation That Is Most Disturbing To A Movie-maker. The Explosions And The Knifings. People Like To Go To What's Hot And You Can't Get Past A Certain Gross Unless You Involve Children Who Go More Than Once.

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.

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

You Can't Handle The Truth!

I've Been Too Many Places. I'm Like The Bad Penny.

I Am A Person Who Is Trained To Look Other People In The Eye.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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