“Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that’s all you have.”

An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so must be willing to accept all the experiences life has to offer.

When an actor plays a scene exactly the way a director orders, it isn’t acting. It’s following instructions. Anyone with the physical qualifications can do that.

You’re tearing me apart!

What do we need all that for?”If a picture is psychologically motivated, if there is truth in the relationship in it, then I think that picture will do good.

Nowadays, he lives in a world we don’t understand too well, the actor’s world. We don’t see too much of him. But he’s a good boy, my Jim.

Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that’s all you have.

Being a senior in high school means you’re not only getting closer to adulthood, but also ready to start thinking about your dreams and aspirations, whether that’s applying for college, joining the military, or seeing the world.

If I had one day when I didn’t have to be all confused and didn’t have to feel that I was ashamed of everything. If I felt that I belonged someplace. You know?

Take it easy driving– the life you save may be mine.

There is no way to be truly great in this world. We are all impaled on the crook of conditioning.

He must be superhuman in his efforts to store away in the core of his subconscious everything that he might be called upon to use in the expression of his art.

I can’t let in the light.It will destroy my performance like light destroys film

Reality doesn’t have any preconceived ideas. You’ve got to learn how to smoke the cigarette, not act smoking the cigarette.

The gratification comes in the doing, not in the results.

To me, acting is the most logical way for people’s neuroses to manifest themselves, in this great need we all have to express ourselves.

Mind you, my boy will make his mark.

The essence of being human is that, in the brief moment we exist on this spinning planet, we can love some persons and some things, in spite of the fact that time and death will ultimately claim us all.

I did not want to spend the rest of my life not being able to ride in a nice car.

Beware of being too rational. In the country of the insane, the integrated man doesn’t become king. He gets lynched.

I was five years old; I got addicted to being on stage. I felt like it was the most wonderful place on Earth, performing in front of an audience, who in this case were a bunch of classmates, kids my age.

Democracy is itself, a religious faith. For some it comes close to being the only formal religion they have.

Helping others is a question of being genuine and projecting that genuineness to others. This way of being doesn’t have to have a title or a name particularly. It is just being ultimately decent.

Work is making a living out of being bored.

Courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible.