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

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!

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.

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

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 only greatness for man is immortality.

I wrinkled my nose, trying to figure out what he smelled like. Not cigarettes. Something richer, fouler. Cigars.

The time of a cigarette is a parenthesis, and if it is shared, you are both in that parenthesis. Its like a proscenium arch for a dialogue.

I met the surgeon general – he offered me a cigarette.

Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.

But even today, ninety per cent of the items covered by the word are forgettable objects in which cigarettes can be left to go stale.

The second technique was the ever popular chimney fire and number three had to be the drunken cigarette drop on the carpet.

I never wanna have a time where I’m on the big lawn just sitting back smoking cigars and drinking lemonade. I wanna work forever. Until I die. I wanna die on the way to a show.

I’m addicted to you as a man to a cigarette.