“Most people who become suddenly famous overnight will find that they lose practically eighty percent of their friends. Your old friends just can’t stand it for some reason.”

The most dangerous thing in the world is to make a friend of an Englishman, because he’ll come sleep in your closet rather than spend 10 shillings on a hotel.

A man who doesn’t dream is like a man who doesn’t sweat. He stores up a lot of poison.

I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.

If there is no mystery, for the artist, to solve inside of his art, then there’s no point in it….for me, every act of the art of solving a mystery.

There is only one unpardonable sin–deliberate cruelty. All else can be forgiven.

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That’s why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.

Sometimes when I think how good my book can be, I can hardly breathe.

Everybody has to feel superior to somebody,” she said. “But it’s customary to present a little proof before you take the privilege.

It may be normal, darling; but I’d rather be natural.

It is the want to know the end that makes us believe in God, or witchcraft, believe, at least, in something

One of the most difficult things in writing a novel or anything at all is to choose the point of view from which it’s going to be told.

You can’t blame a writer for what the characters say.

Aprils have never meant much to me, autumns seem that season of beginning, spring.

The good thing about masturbation is that you don’t have to get dressed up for it.

The better the actor, the more stupid he is.

I’ve never not been famous.

Everybody wants to be famous, but nobody wants to do the work.

I was the most famous kid in the United States. That was 1936.

Wanting to be an actor and wanting to be famous are different.

What I’ve said before, only half in joke, is that everybody in Ireland is famous. Or, maybe better, say everybody is familiar.

The result, I think, is pretty interesting … we don’t expect to make a fortune at it or ever be popular or famous or worshipped or hit The Ed Sullivan Show or the circuses or the big top.

I begged the universe to make me a famous comedian, and it did. So I tend not to ask for any more.

See, ‘A Time to Kill’ was the one I got famous off of. Big ka-boom, over one weekend. After that, I did films that I really wanted to do.