I think death is just a transition to another state of consciousness.
Val Kilmer
If you think that by threatening me you can get me to do what you want... well, that's where you're right. But - and I am only saying this because I care - there's a lot of decaffeinated brands on the market that are just as tasty as the real thing.
You just don't understand humility until you have children and get divorced.
A wonderful but kind of a terrible truth about acting is that you actually get to a point where you become content with an impossible task: it is really impossible to properly prepare. You kind of have to start over every time.
I don't think of my life as a cliche, but I'm a cliche eccentric. Complete with a strange name - I mean, who's named Val? How many Vals do you know? I mean, really?
Warren Beatty once told me that if someone's really stuck on you, find them their next boyfriend. But I could never do that.
Without deadlines and restrictions I just tend to become preoccupied with other things.
I've been very fortunate and met the guys that have become, basically, philosophers and have a kind of sensibility about life that's very precious.
The first play I saw was a Samuel Beckett play which was great.
What I do for a living is listen.
My father was raised in the mountains of New Mexico, and he picked cotton for a dollar a day. He was working for the family from the time he was 7.
Daryl Hannah likes to goof around with fashion, but she does have pretty impeccable taste.
Peter Sellers was just a brilliant actor, and also comedic.
When you're young, you're always concerned about how you're being seen and how you're being criticized.
I don't watch television, but I saw 'The Office' by accident. I thought it was so sophisticated, the Victorian love story, and so bold. We'd do anything, all of us, to not work in that environment, and then I'm sitting there watching hours of it.
The Secret Service is a strange group. They don't really have a leader. It's not set up like a military. Each one is supposed to be able to act like a leader when something comes up.
I'm going to put a museum on my ranch and people keep saying, 'That's a huge idea.' Yeah, it's big, but not bigger than the average big movie. A hundred million dollars in the art world is a substantial amount of cash to do anything. That's maybe a big gallery's total sales for a given year.
It's fun to look at people that are so good at acting that aren't actors, like David Bowie creating a mystique about rock n' roll. I've listened to 'Ziggy Stardust' as much as any rock n' roll fan - I don't really know what it's about, but it sure is fun to think about David Bowie as this mad creation.
There was no one around called 'Val' when I was young, so I wanted to be John or Bill. Now I like it.
It's the persona that makes you a leading actor. A leading actor has something extra that's fun to watch. But it isn't usually about acting.
We take what's shown on television as the truth, and it isn't. News isn't even the truth on television. If you look up the definition of what news is, it isn't that what we're watching on the new - it's entertainment.
Most films made about the future acquiesce toward death, and I don't want to be told how to define my future.
Hollywood is wonderful, but it does eat its young.
I have two children and they're young yet but all of the children that I know really inspire me.
Again, in Wag the Dog, war has to be declared by an act of congress. But if you go to war, you don't have to declare war. You're just at war and we did that, which is not legal.
Warner Bros offered me the next Batman, and the only reason that I didn't do it was because of The Saint.
It's fun to look at people that are so good at acting that aren't actors, like David Bowie creating a mystique about rock n' roll.
I respect people who can do both careers, like Will Smith and a couple of other people who have done it, but I just don't know when they sleep.
It's a really weird thing, modern divorce. I found out I was getting divorced on television. That was kind of weird.
Why do women get paid less money? It doesn't make any sense.
I can safely say that no one who has ever won an Oscar didn't want to win an Oscar.
Youth is seen as everything. You don't know anything when you're young. It's great being older, just having a more balanced perspective. I wake up and realise that what seemed to be important last year no longer is. I'm increasingly grateful for every day.
Mark Twain is as big as America. He really is.
Jim Thompson understood something about the serial killer before the psychology caught up to it, which is that they are detached to it and they do want to get caught.
I'm a character actor, but I look like a leading man.
My perception is that I've never done anything but work really hard.
I'm very wary of news on television.
Postman is a media analyst and his theory is that television doesn't influence our culture, but that it is our culture and the presidency and anything that relies on television.
If you look up the definition of news in the dictionary, it isn't what you watch on TV.
News is something that happens that matters to you, which is not most of what we watch on television.
I sang the songs in 'The Doors'.
It's the first time that I've ever had an art show based on a film, but it's a photography collage.
Well I sure had been looking for a comedy for years without any success.
Partly because the town is just finicky, there are strange Catch 22 clauses in the consciousness of this community and one of them was that you, I found out, you can't do a comedy unless you've just done a comedy.
A lot of old guys in movies are like cowboys - they talk like cowboys and they dress like cowboys.
That's the joy of art - it should be dangerous and challenging but it's just art - it's safe.
Acting is very immediate.
Mark Twain created a new type of literature and not a lot of people can say that. Not a lot of people can say they're absolutely original and completely self-made.
Mark Twain had a way of telling stories that shifts your consciousness away from labels.
There are a thousand ways to play any role.
