Citations

Collaboration--that's the word producers use. That means, "Don't forget to kiss ass from beginning to end".

Personality is everything that's false in a human, everything that's been added on to him and contrived.

[Aug. 1970 interview in "Playboy" magazine] The people the critics write for aren't important to me. As far as I'm concerned, Broadway just doesn't exist.

[on working in films] It's all about narcissism. Terrence Malick called it "sanctioned vanity". Everything is attended to. "Would you like some Perrier? Anything we can do? May we throw ourselves on the ground in front of you?". This unbelievable barrage of indulgence.

I was different on drugs-crystal Methedrine, which had more of an edge. When you walked down the street, your heels made sparks.

Don't you find it kind of self-indulgent for actors to go around writing parts for themselves?

There are places where writing is acting and acting is writing. I'm not so interested in the divisions. I'm interested in the way things cross over.

I'm not in demand. I'm all washed up.

Hollywood is geared toward teenage idiocy.

You're still much more afraid of the audience, and yet, on the other hand, you desperately want to plunge into new territory. So every once in a while, the opportunity to make this leap gets handed to you. It's like jumping into cold water.

It's one of the great tragedies of our contemporary life in America, that families fall apart. Almost everybody has that in common.

I didn't go out of my way to get into this movie stuff. I think of myself as a writer.

[on Harry Dean Stanton] He is one of those actors who knows that his face is the story.