“Being a good actor isn’t easy. Being a man is even harder. I want to be both before I’m done.”

You are who you are meant to be. Dance as if no one’s watching. Love as if it’s all you know. Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.

Whatever’s inside making me what I am, it’s like film. Film only works in the dark. Tear it all open and let in the light and you kill it.

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.

Racing is the only time I feel whole.

In the short span of his lifetime, an actor must learn all there is to know, experience all there is to experience, or approach that state as closely as possible.

What better way to die? It’s fast and clean and you go out in a blaze of glory!

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

It was an accident, although I’ve been involved in some kind of theatrical function or other since I was a child – in school, music, athletics.

Am I in love? Absolutely. I’m in love with ancient philosophers, foreign painters, classic authors, and musicians who have died long ago. I’m a passionate lover.

I’m a serious-minded and intense little devil – terribly gauche and so tense that I don’t see how people can stay in the same room as me. I know I couldn’t tolerate myself.

A good boy, and I’m very proud of him. Not easy to understand, no sir. He’s not easy to understand. But he’s all man, and he’ll make his mark.

You need to drink the drink, not act drinking the drink. You’ve got to do things and not show them.

I have sacrificed a physical bond, for a metaphysical relationship. I am the ultimate idealistic lover.

I firmly believe Rebel Without A Cause is such a picture.

A fish that is in the water has no choice that he is. Genius would have it that we swim in sand. We are fish and we drown.

Anyone with the physical qualifications can do that. So the director’s task is just that – to direct, to point the way. Then the actor takes over.

And I love doing this thing, and they will have to blow me out of here with dynamite before I leave.

Everyone should fail in a big way at least once before reaching forty.

You’ll be an old man before you know it.

Consider each drawing as a problem that did not exist before, and then try to solve that problem to the best of your ability. That i what caricature is all about

Teach success before teaching responsibility. Teach them to believe in themselves.

Mike Bloomfield sat down and started playing, and I went, whoa! Because I had never heard any white person play like that before.

Since fame is an illusion and death is in our future all we have is the next moment before we are swallowed into oblivion.

You can actually figure out before you work on something how much blood you will have to let emotionally.