I have a lot of scars, man. My mother said that a man is not a man unless he has a scar on his face. And what she meant by a scar was some kind of battle that you had to go through, whether it was psychological or physical. To her, a scar was actually beautiful and not something that marred you.
Nick Nolte
If you get yourself in a hole, you dig yourself out.
Birth is violent, and out of that violence is our only chance of rebirth.
No one wants to spend too long inside their own darkness.
Living in a small town, one of the keys to survival was your imagination.
I've made a lot of mistakes and I don't regret any of them. Sometimes that's the only way you learn.
In 'Over the Hedge,' I played a bear, and I spent all this time listening to the sounds they make when they fight and mate, when they're angry or happy.
If you're older you want to tell stories about the pool of human life and living and to communicate, not only to your age group but to do an age group that can begin to understand, that has enough experience of life far beyond the taste of life.
When women talk about their feelings, they're not asking for solutions.
Everyone chases a bit of what they say life is about: money, desire... But when you stop chasing, you realise life is a rhythm and it's very peaceful, very quiet. You see, it's quite a miracle.
After Civil Rights, it was very awkward for whites and blacks. We didn't know how to talk to each other.
I am a good sewer. My mother taught me how to sew.
We're very reluctant to change, even though we know that all things change, and especially our relationships are just determined to change.
If you feel you have a film that's valid, you stick your ass on the line.
Sometimes the writing can be so good that the actor doesn't really have to do anything.
Ageing's a difficult thing, moving closer to death, but it's okay. I've had a good time living, so I'm gonna have a good time dying.
Peace, truthfully, is how you feel inside.
Early on I decided that I was going to lie to the press. The best approach to talking about my personal life was to lie.
The truth was that, you know, there was no reason to send me to Shattuck Military School. But it was a disciplinarian school.
Obviously I had gone all through high school and into college, and you don't do that not knowing how to read.
World War II affected the male population in a very detrimental way. They were happy to be home, happy to be alive, happy they won, but they could not express to anybody the horror they had been through.
You have to struggle a bit, hustle a little, and be willing to go bankrupt. Once you're willing to do that, everything opens up and you get the freedom. My joke is that next year, I'll make the first film that costs zero dollars.
Nobody likes to lose power or reach a point of humility.
You're playing a role, but you're still feeling it. You can walk away from it after 'Cut,' but if you're playing a sad or mixed-up person, it's hard to stay in that place for these longish period of times. You kind of have to check out.
The greatest movie would be the movie that gave the audience a cathartic feeling of transcendence.
I've been called 'the voice actor.'
It's failure, really, that you grow by, although nobody likes to experience it.
If you had a cancer on your skin and had it burned it off, you'd wash it and clean it every day.
I never fought much. It just wasn't my thing. I suppose I could, but I've never got into fights. Not a real one.
The only people who ever called me a rebel were people who wanted me to do what they wanted.
Electing a black president was probably the only coup America could pull off.
I'd like to do one European film a year.
All American males are failed athletes, and it was big time even if it was Little League. It meant a lot to you.
Action films have a certain illogicalness to them. They're what we call, when we're working, 'exaggerated realism.'
In the sixties, you're still thinking you could do something about this slow disintegration of the body.
Actors are really working with bodies, with their minds, and with their emotions. Feelings, basically. That's what movies are about, going from one feeling to another.
Now, there is always a tremendous fear of science and progressing forward into areas of the unknown and it is a valid fear. Some of the genetic alterations of food are a little edgy.
I have a high degree of sensitivity, always have. I was very shy as a child. I don't know why that was.
I accept the dying process. I would just like to be as healthy as I possibly can at each step and phase along the way.
We're really all alone. We can't ever get inside another person's spirit, and see the world they do. So we are alone in that sense. The only way we have to communicate feelings is through words.
I've never been all that comfortable in real life.
If I'm not a successful human being, who I am?
Yes, you can get addicted to exercise.
I'm glad I never went to war.
I never felt comfortable in real life very well. It's always been an awkward kind of thing for me and so when I hit the stage I just sensed freedom. I sensed, 'Here's a place that I can have all the experiences of life and not feel uncomfortable about it.'
We truly have an ancient part of the brain that was about survival when we were prey but we seem to have gone past prey. We eat everything and nothing eats us.
When you are making the one you are doing, you think it is the greatest film going. And then you do another one and it is a great film.
I like working with writer-directors because you can solve problems right there.
When I was a kid, my dad went to World War II. I didn't know him. I was born in '41.
We're social animals. We've got to get along together. It's in our nature. We're hardwired that way.
