Top 171 Quotes & Sayings by John Malkovich

The world is ruled by violence, or at least the imminent threat of violence. It always has been.

I don't have a saviour or a royal family.

I only have two rules for my newly born daughter: she will dress well and never have sex.

I'm more comfortable with whatever's wrong with me than my father was whenever he felt he failed or didn't measure up to the standard he set.

If you don't interfere with me, I'll always do something really good.

I'm not a Method actor. I don't believe acting should be psychodrama. I look within myself and see what I can find to play the role with. If I'm playing a blind man, I don't go around blindfolded for days. A lot of good actors would, but I don't go in for that very much. I like to just make it up as I go along.

I haven't physically attacked anyone in a couple of years.

People always say life is short. I've never been convinced of that - mine seems to have a tendency to go on and on.

You can't work in the movies. Movies are all about lighting. Very few filmmakers will concentrate on the story. You get very little rehearsal time, so anything you do onscreen is a kind of speed painting.

There's a reason screens are only this thick.

Where women are concerned, the rule is never to go out with anyone better dressed than you.

In New York in the Forties or Fifties, everybody's in a suit, an overcoat and a hat.

I wouldn't say anything I ever did in film would be something I'd use the word proud about. I've done better work in the theater.

I don't want a trillion-dollar empire to run.

You have to do things people see or you don't get to do anything.

You know, I'm really not interested in someone telling me that something's good or bad.

I'm more likely to lose my temper on a film set than almost anywhere. Often the level of idiocy is so exalted that it's impossible to comprehend.

Some directors expect you to do everything; write, be producer, psychiatrist. Some just want you to die in a tragic accident during the shooting so they can get the insurance.

I find it hard to pre-plan every element of everything I do. It's not my thing.

I don't want to be boring. But that's not always easy.

Theater is so ephemeral, and I love that.

Well, I like to have fun at work.

It's not a gift of mine, but one given to me, to be able to criticise myself and not be crushed, by myself or by others.

Most of the women that I like have a haunted quality - they're sort of like women who live in a haunted house all by themselves.

Utopia means elsewhere.

I wouldn't describe myself as lacking in confidence, but I would just say that - the ghosts you chase you never catch.

Unlike my grandfather or my brother, I've actually been able to make some money at a racetrack.

I don't understand how somebody wouldn't have a sense of humor about themselves.

I mean, a lot of time rehearsals are taken up with other things other than preparing a character.

I like to direct movies, but I don't like to goof around for eight years talking about it.

I don't lose my temper very often now, and if I do, it's well deserved.

I'm more boring and more conservative.

I'm supposed to be a pretty good theater actor.

You can be a mason and build 50 buildings, but it doesn't mean you can design one.

I've permitted myself to learn and to fail with some regularity. And that is probably the one thing I was given, and that I'm still grateful for.

I don't mind what I play, really.

We have a tendency to think everyone's idiotic and everyone's only doing something idiotic, and the world is controlled by a not-so-secret group of morons. There's great truth in that, I suppose, but then it's also not true.

The projects I look for to produce or direct would not be ones in which I would want to act.

I wasn't really raised to be the type of person to have doubts.

Even if you do succeed most people wouldn't notice anyway.

Failure's a natural part of life.

Quite often - a lot of the work I had done had been extensively with women. Most especially in the theater, but also quite often in the movies. That has its own delights, and maybe pitfalls too.

I don't care what other people think. I don't think it matters.

I lost seventy pounds eating nothing but Jello for 4 months. But of course there is great variety in the colors! I think, if I remember correctly, it's 230 calories for a whole bowl. Maybe 270? In the 5th month, I added fruit.

My life before children I don't really remember. I've heard references to it, but I really don't remember.

I'm an atheist.

Imagine how asleep or utterly unperceptive and clueless you would have to be not to see yourself as absurd for the most part.

Of course it's trivial, but then most things are.

I still have a temper, I suppose.

People get up, they go to work, they have their lives, but you'll never see the headlines say, 'Six billion people got along rather well today.' You'll have the headline about the 30 people who shot each other.

I was a very good baseball player and football player as a kid.

I was a very good baseball and football player, but my father always told me I was much more interested in how I looked playing baseball or football than in actually playing. There's great truth in that.

Nothing you do particularly matters. But I'm not sure that's a great excuse for doing it poorly.

If you're too smart it can limit you because you spend so much time thinking that you don't do anything.

I think people seem to sort of associate me with danger. And I don't see that at all.

I like design, I like details, to me it is just another form of self-expression.

I think when I went to psychoanalysis, I actually believed that people said what they meant. This was my whole problem.

My father was a very contradictory man.

I can have incredible self-discipline. But see, I think it's obviously a form of stupidity.

I don't think my parents know what I do.