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When You Act In A Film, You're Inevitably Surrounded By People You Didn't Choose, Right Down To The Set Painter. I Like Being Able To Pick The Family I'm Waking Up To In The Morning That's Going To Make This Group Effort To Tell A Story That Applies To What's Interesting To Me At That Stage In My Life.

-Sean Penn

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When You Act In

Sean Penn

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When You Act In A Film, You're Inevitably Surrounded By People You Didn't Choose, Right Down To The Set Painter. I Like Being Able To Pick The Family I'm Waking Up To In The Morning That's Going To Make This Group Effort To Tell A Story That Applies To What's Interesting To Me At That Stage In My Life.

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Sense Of Self, And The Way One Shares It, Is Perhaps The Most Valuable And Poetic Gift In The Arsenal Of One's Life And Craft.

The Thing That's Very Close In The Process Is Writing And Acting, Not Directing. Directing's Very Different.

There Is No Re-inventing The Wheel.

I Don't Think You Can Get Away With Putting Your Talents In A Toilet Bowl And Not Having Them Flushed Away. Forever. There Is A Level Of Murder Of One's Soul And Of The Culture That They're Supposed To Be Feeding Vitamins To.

The Major Studios Are By And Large Banks, And They Give You What Is By And Large A Loan To Make A Movie. Like Banks, They Want Their Money Back Plus.

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I Don't Read Newspapers Too Much , Just Because They Tend To Make Me Feel I Have A Political Obligation That I Think Is A Distraction From What My Political Offerings Are Going To Be If I Just Make My Movies.

Haiti, Like Any Place, Has Its Security Problems; It Has A Great Challenge In Terms Of Establishing A Kind Of Globally Acceptable Rule Of Law.

Venezuela And Its Revolution Will Endure Under The Proven Leadership Of Vice President Maduro.

It's Pretty Much Rock-'n'-roll. I Sit Down And Start Feeling Stuff And Writing.

In Between, I Go Broke Because I Seem To Do Movies Where You're Not Paid A Lot As An Actor.

That Difference Do You Think You Can Make, One Man In All This Madness?

The Bottom Line Is, You Love Your Wife, You Do Your Best With That.

Whatever One Considers Art To Be, There Is In Many People A Hunger To Express Themselves Creatively And To Feel Authentic In Doing That.

I Think If You Want Good Things To Happen For A Country Like Haiti, Then You Need To Provide The Circumstances Where The Haitians Can Do That.

I Get A Little Scared Of Words Like Maturity.

And Dressed Her [madonna] Up Like A Turkey. After I Read That Stuff, I Thought Long And Hard About What One Would Do To Dress Someone Up Like A Turkey. And I Nailed It. I Figured You've Got To Get Out The Playtex Glove, Blow It Up And Put The Glove Over The Head.

I'm Not Going To Have A Better Day, A More Magical Moment Than The First Time I Heard My Daughter Giggle.

Women Are The Best. The Toughest. The Bane Of My Existence. And I'll Forever Fall For It.

When I Go To Bed At Night And I Think Of Humanity At Large, I Think Of All Those Things.

Bukowski Said, "i Know I'm Good, So I Like That People Think I'm Bad, Because It Gives Me A Dimension, Effortlessly."

The First Instinct Is Love.

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Reputations Are Maintained By The Outside World, And They're Created By It, Too, By And Large. And They Serve As A Hell Of A Device For Privacy, Because The More People Look For Something That's Not There, The Less Chance They Have Of Violating Who You Are. It's Like Going Out There With A Mask On, Without Having To Exercise Your Upper Body To Put It On.

I'd Do Anything To Get A Performance, Short Of Malice.

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Today, Maturity Is A Word I Associate With Spirituality. It's One Of Those Words That Cause People To Change Their Voice. When Your Voice Gets Higher Because Of What You're Saying, There's A Problem. To Me, The Conflict Of Life Is Part Of The Joy Of Life. There's Got To Be A Recognition Of The Friction That Exists. Maturity Seems Somehow About Getting Careful. I Don't Want To Be Careful.

I Like To Believe That Love Is A Reciprocal Thing, That It Can't Really Be Felt, Truly, By One.

All I Need Are Some Tasty Waves, A Cool Buzz, And I'm Fine

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I've Been A Road-rat Since I Got My Driver's Licence At 16, So I've Probably Gone Across America 20 Times.

I Just Want Real Creative Freedom Without Worrying About, You Know, Car Payments.

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Testing Yourself

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I Have A Regret That The Entire Discussion [with El Chapo]... Ignores Its Purpose, Which Was To Try To Contribute To This Discussion About The Policy In The War On Drugs.

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Fulfilling What You Start Is Why You Start Something.

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Favorites Things

One Of The Things You Don't Have In Haiti Is You Don't Have Anybody On Crack Doing Something Completely Out Of - That's Unpredictable. Even At The Worst Times In Haiti, The Violence That Had Happened, The Lack Of Security That Happened, Was Largely Predictable Because It Was Politically Tied.

Haiti Kind Of Gets A Hold Of You.

I Can Make A Better Living As An Actor Than I Can As A Director. Though I Certainly Would Prefer To Be Directing Movies.

Directing Movies

My Greatest Interest In It Was Certainly Not To Avoid Those Things That Were Going To Be Controversial About The Family But The Interest I Had In The Story Was Predominantly What He Was Pursuing And Not As Much What He Was Fleeing.

Yeah, I Had Actually Tried To Stop Acting Before I Made Dead Man Walking.

I Can't Imagine Being Quite As Lucky At Any Other Time - I Certainly Never Have Been Before. That Goes Right Down From My Producing Partners To People Like Eddie Vedder. But The Two Things That Make Me Feel That This Was Meant To Be Now And Not Before Was That The Story Itself Has More Resonance Today - I Find It A More Important Story Today Than It Was Then - And Emile.

It Has Nothing To Do With The Emotional Demands Of A Role; I've Done Comedies That Are As Draining To Me As Any Drama.

What Happens Is Things Come To You - Director, Script - And If You Respond To It, It's Because It's Tapping Into Some Part Of What's Inside You, And Different Roles Tap Into Different Parts.

I've Never Really Been One To Get What They Call Stage Fright So Much.

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At This Stage, What Would Be Rewarding Would Be For Audiences To Want To Watch.

I'll Tell You What I Probably Would Prefer To Happen Less And Less: Actors That I Know And Respect In Shampoo Ads. Or Modeling.

There Is No Shame In My Saying That We All Want To Be Loved.

There's A Lot Of Mediocrity Being Celebrated, And A Lot Of Wonderful Stuff Being Ignored Or Discouraged.

I Don't See Life As An Opportunity To See How Far You Can Go In The Pursuit Of Pain, Although I Think I've Challenged It A Bit.

I Can Tell You That My Contribution Based On My Interpretation Of The Book Is Unchanged. The Other Things, In Terms Of Doing The Research And Following The Trail Of It, Were Probably Pretty Similar To What I Would Have Done Then. I Think That What Makes Me Celebrate That It Took The 10 Years Is The Various Other People And Contributors That I Ended Up Having On Board.

Jon Krakauer Had Documented It Very Accurately And Very Well But This Kid Made A Real Impression On People, And Likewise They On Him. To Talk To Them Was Very Moving In Many Cases Because They Talk About Him Like They Saw Him Yesterday. In Most Cases They Knew This Kid For A Couple Of Weeks In Their Whole Life And He Just Lasted With Them.

There's Not A Lot Of Good Movies Being Made.

I Love Acting, Truly My Favorite People Are Actors.

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You Try To Do Your Best At What You're Getting Paid For.

I Think Life's An Irrational Obsession.

That On A Romantic Level, If You Feel It About Somebody And It's Pure, It Means That They Do Too.

I Had A House Burn Down Once, And Everything In Life Burned Except My Family, And It Was So Liberating. I Didn't Have A Bad Moment About It. It Sort Of Reinvigorated My Interest In A Lot Of Things. I Wonder If There Should Be Some Kind Of Anarchy.

It's A Foreground Of My Feeling. That Place Moves Me. And I Don't Mean My Country; It's Part Of Our Shared Natural World That Happens To Be Particular To A Sense Of Wherever My Storytelling Inclinations Come From And My Own History Of Kind Of Being A Road Rat And Travelling.

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I Think That It Is A Good Time For Those Who Voted For The Ban Against Gay Marriage To Sit And Reflect And Anticipate Their Great Shame And The Shame In Their Grandchildren's Eyes If They Continue That Way Of Support. We've Got To Have Equal Rights For Everyone.

A Swat Team Surrounded My House And Came In Every Door. But It Happened Because On The Day That We Split Up, Madonna Developed A Concern That If She Were To Return To The House, She Would Get A Very Severe Haircut.

Rebel Is Just As Bad A Word As Maturity.

If You Don’t Vote, You Don’t Matter.

The Greatest Fear In My Life Was Getting Happy. I'm Not So Afraid Of That Anymore.

I Don't Believe There Are Climate Skeptics. I Think There Are People Who Indulge In A Culture Of What Can Be Reduced To Fox Network Thinking. That Has Nothing To Do With The Politics That Apply To The Protection Of Quality Of Life In Any Sense. It's Like Talking To A Member Of A Cult.

There Is A Kind Of Sense Of Truth And Reconciliation That Is Non-formalized, But It's Understood And Accepted. Haitians Are Haitians And There Is An Inherent Loyalty That Forgives An Awful Lot.

I Think We All Have Light And Dark Inside Us.

A Child Gets A Fever In The United States And It's High Enough And Sustainable Enough, All Of Us Can Bring A Child To An Emergency Room. Most Haitians Never Had That Opportunity. They Didn't Have The Emergency Room To Bring Them To. Virtually Every Time Your Child Has 102 Fever, You Wait For It To Die And You Have No Clean Water To Give It.

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