What I always wanted to get seen as was as a good actor, when it was the acting I was doing.
ALAN ALDAEveryone opens up to one another right away. That’s a terrific thing. I love that about actors. They know how personal this job is.
More Alan Alda Quotes
-
-
Everyone opens up to one another right away. That’s a terrific thing. I love that about actors. They know how personal this job is.
ALAN ALDA -
I can sing in tune now, but I have to work really hard on it to make sure that I don’t exercise one of my great talents, which is the ability to sing in three keys at the same time.
ALAN ALDA -
[You have to be] willing to be changed by the person you’re listening to, where you’re not just waiting for a pause so you can say your thing, but you’re actually letting them have an effect on you if they can.
ALAN ALDA -
Eventually, I found a radical way of thinking about listening. Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you.
ALAN ALDA -
What I can’t completely understand is most other people’s fascination with what the famous among us do with their lips and the rest of their bodies.
ALAN ALDA -
Nothing important was ever accomplished without chutzpah. Columbus had chutzpah. The signers of the Declaration of Independence had chutzpah.
ALAN ALDA -
I used to be a Catholic. I left because I object to conversion by concussion. If you don’t agree with what they teach, you get clobbered over the head until you do. All that does is change the shape of the head.
ALAN ALDA -
The difference between listening and pretending to listen, I discovered, is enormous. One is fluid, the other is rigid. One is alive, the other is stuffed.
ALAN ALDA -
The other one, and probably an equal pleasure, is finding out how I can be helpful and then really being helpful.
ALAN ALDA -
During the first day, curious at having outsiders among them, a long stream of inmates came over and talked with me.
ALAN ALDA -
Begin challenging your own assumptions.
ALAN ALDA -
I’ve sat looking down into a volcano that could blow at any moment; I’ve helped catch a shark and several rattlesnakes;
ALAN ALDA -
I let a tarantula walk across my hand, and I ate rat soup.
ALAN ALDA -
In 2003, I almost died of an intestinal blockage when I was on a mountain in Chile, filming a segment for ‘Scientific American Frontiers.’
ALAN ALDA -
I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn’t know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen.
ALAN ALDA