Top 202 Quotes & Sayings by David Duchovny - Page 2

It's hard to find scripts that know what they are from page one to page 115.

Humility is considered an un-masculine quality.

I don't know how anybody gets better at anything aside from doing it.

I had to work in one of the most beautiful ski resorts in the world for almost three weeks. Pity me.

I still feel like I haven't grown up.

I've made so many mistakes. But it is my feeling that you learn from failures, so I welcome them as often as I can.

Well, I still write poetry, but I wouldn't call myself a poet.

Games, by nature, have more plot options and non-linear qualities than TV and film.

In terms of likeability, that's something that I don't think about as an actor when I approach a role.

I wouldn't succeed at musical theater.

I enjoy comedy and I hope that people enjoy watching me do it.

I love the Lower East Side.

I never thought about the actors on television or film, like what kind of life they had.

What strikes me is that 'XIII' looks like a movie. The shot making is movie-like, which is kind of fun - the kind of playful action movie shot making is pretty, is pretty good. What's also great about this game is its style and interesting story-line.

You can go through life and actually speak your mind and do it in an articulate fashion and with a really intelligent point of view.

I'm very proud of my Scottish blood.

Sometimes the better the writing, the harder it is to play because you really want to service it.

I don't think of myself as a TV actor. I think of myself as a film, television and Off-Off-Off-Off Broadway actor.

It's always a mystery when you're going into a role - 'Here's your wife of 40 years and... action!' How do you create ease or chemistry or whatever is supposed to exist?

I was about 26 or 27 and it was imperative that I make a living right away and it's hard to make a living on stage, so I started in television and film.

I had a fear that I'd be typecast, but I don't really have that fear anymore.

My whole life, I've wanted things before I was ready. I was always pushing for the next job, the next success. I was so focused on achieving and the path that I was missing some great point about life.

I think the real heroic teachers are the ones who work with kids, like my mom and my sister do.

Maybe the best things about celebrity are the things like being able to get that seat on the plane that you wouldn't normally get, but that's kind of like cheating.

Most journalists expect me to answer all their questions about aliens and spaceships.

You can't control your mind. Why would you want to?

I don't like watching people work if they're making art.

When I grew up, I was in Manhattan the whole time. But my kids have been all over the world.

Actually, I have an interest in finishing my Ph.D., but I just know I never will.

I wanted to write plays. I was at Yale graduate school at the time for English literature, not for acting... I liked the idea of collaboration, and I thought if I'm gonna write plays, I should learn something about speaking the lines that I might try to write.

I'm turning into a stricter dad.

I enjoy trying to figure out the best way to compliment the picture and not overpower it.

It's always like you write a poem when you can't really say what you're trying to say.

98% of the people in the world are harmless and wish you well, but it only takes one person who doesn't. That's what you're constantly on guard against.

I don't want to know what happens in any movie that I go to see.

'Duch' means spirit and 'ovny' is kind of the adjectival ending, so the word itself means spiritual. It's my father's name, obviously. He took the 'H' out because he was tired of people saying Duchovny, but he never did it legally. When my parents divorced, my mother, to my father, put the 'H' back in.

Chemistry is really about two people who like to act together, I think. It's like tennis in the most cliched way. It's like if you hit the ball, they hit the ball back, and they don't hit it into the stands, and they don't put the ball in their pocket and walk off - and they don't argue with the umpire, you know?

I envisioned that as my life: staying in academia to make a living and then taking summers off to write my novels.

I think Polanski's an amazing director.

I understand the self-loathing and the resentment, and the discipline that it takes to sit down in front of a typewriter or computer every single day, whether it's going well or not going well.

'The X-Files,' as I recall, we didn't know really what we were until the middle of the first year. You know, so if we'd been cancelled, you get cancelled before you mature into what it is you can actually be, which is too bad.

Sometimes the better the writing, the harder it is to play because you really want to service it. It's hard to be that quick and articulate in life. You've got to try to make it seem discovered, you know, not rehearsed.

I feel like I came to acting late in a way. I was about 26 or 27, and it was imperative that I make a living right away, and it's hard to make a living on stage, so I started in television and film.

Part of being an actor is letting things come about organically as opposed to forcing them.

My favorite parts of work as an actor and a director are those unplanned mistakes that do happen, because it's like catching lightning in a bottle. It's the best part of what we do.

You become tyrannized by this notion that women must not only be treated equally, but they must never fail.

I mean, there's chemistry in life and there's acting chemistry. I'm not saying they're the same thing, but they're as mysterious.

I don't need my phone to play me music. I need it to be a phone and an e-mail thing.

I never, ever, ever cook. And I would never eat anything I might cook.

A lot of times passion projects or films are difficult to make because they don't have proven directors attached to them.

Privacy is something I have come to respect. I think when I was younger I wanted to tell everybody everything, because I thought I was so damn interesting. Then I heard the snoring.

In this age of media and Internet access, we are much more talkative than ever before.

I love animals and I love working with them because they don't lie.

I don't believe in a conspiracy to hide the existence of extraterrestrial life.

'Alien' is a great movie. So is 'Close Encounters.' But I'm not the guy who goes out to the science-fiction festival. '2001's good.

I think people are always trying to demystify whatever acting is, so they want to know what your method is.

I feel like I came to acting late in a way.

Generally, I don't like to walk out of a movie. It's like a relationship - you want to see it to the end; otherwise, you won't know if you left early or not.

In the U.S., oddly, we have images of men as arrogant and aggressive.

I'd love to direct more.