There's only two people in your life you should lie to... the police and your girlfriend.
Jack Nicholson
With my sunglasses on, I'm Jack Nicholson. Without them, I'm fat and 60.
The minute that you're not learning I believe you're dead.
My motto is: more good times.
The average celebrity meets, in one year, ten times the amount of people that the average person meets in his entire life.
Beer, it's the best damn drink in the world.
Just let the wardrobe do the acting.
I don't think many people have a very good understanding of leisure and the importance it plays in our lives.
Well, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I haven't been a rogue most of my life.
I'll tell you one thing: Don't ever give anybody your best advice, because they're not going to follow it.
If men are honest, everything they do and everywhere they go is for a chance to see women.
I'm an actor who they said was wrinkled and balding and everything else when I was in my early 30's. Most of the people who wrote that who thought they were younger than me are now bald and wrinkled.
I am a person who is trained to look other people in the eye.
Played tennis for years. But you can't improve at tennis after you're 50. You get to be in your 40s, and suddenly you're a doubles player.
Well, a girlfriend once told me never to fight with anybody you don't love.
In this industry, there are only two ways up the ladder. Rung by rung or claw your way to the top. It's sure been tough on my nails.
We are going as fast as we can as soon as we can. We're in a race against time, until we run out of money.
In my last year of school, I was voted Class Optimist and Class Pessimist. Looking back, I realize I was only half right.
I can't hit on women in public any more. I didn't decide this; it just doesn't feel right at my age.
The blues and jazz will live forever... So will the Delta and the Big Easy.
I don't have any plugs or tucks but people do what they want. I look at it as mutilation.
I've been too many places. I'm like the bad penny.
I used to think that one of the great signs of security was the ability to just walk away.
I'm content with the fact that I made a decent effort. That's what I've always worried about: that I wouldn't try hard enough.
I think that's what distinguishes Schmidt, really. In the movies now, so much of what is appealing to an audience is the dramatic or has to do with science fiction, and Schmidt is simply human. There's no melodrama; there's no device, It's just about a human being.
There were points in my life where I felt oddly irresistible to women. I'm not in that state now and that makes me sad.
I'm definitely still wild at heart.
I've never been able to say I've been influenced by a list of artists I like because I like thousands and thousands and I've been influenced in some way by all of them.
I don't have any fear of intimacy, but rather thrive on it, which is rare in a public person.
What's beautiful is all that counts, pal. That's all that counts.
I worry from the moment I take a job. I worry about how I'm going to do it, if I can do it... Then I walk on set and the director says, 'Roll', and all of a sudden, all of it disappears and it's all happening, and I relax, and I'm doing what I do, and I'm not even thinking about it.
If you get an impulse in a scene, no matter how wrong it seems, follow the impulse. It might be something and if it ain't - take two!
I'm not hard to get along with.
I learned a long time ago in Hollywood that the only person I should vote for is myself.
If I go into a restaurant there's a very good chance that I'm going to spend my time being the mayor. If I want to have a good time, I'm happier having dinner here.
Early on, if I was alone two three nights in a row, I'd start writing poems about suicide.
It's a slight stretch of the imagination but most people are alike in most ways so I've never had any trouble identifying with the character that I'm playing.
You only lie to two people in your life, your girlfriend and the police.
Almost everybody's happy to be a fool for love.
I always knew there wasn't going to be anybody to help me and emotionally support me, that whatever I did I'd have to do on my own.
I'm the last guy in the world to feel overlooked by the Academy.
Financially, I've lost money and made money, but I know my way around financially.
A lot of people can't remember things because they weren't actually there to begin with - they don't take it all in.
In other words, I wouldn't like to be an actor if I could only be real. I like to get wild, behaviorally wild, and it's crazy to think of any form where it's just one way.
Age is the first limitation on roles that I've ever had to encounter, and I hit that awhile ago.
There is no way you can get people to believe you on screen if they know who you really are through television.
Frankly, I got into the movies because I like the movies a lot.
I'm a New Wave baby, so I got very stimulated by foreign film.
I would never complain about my life, even though I really would like to have a mate.
I sort of understood that when I first started: that you shouldn't repeat a success. Very often you're going to, and maybe the first time you do, it works. And you love it. But then you're trapped.
