Top 171 Quotes & Sayings by John Malkovich - Page 2

I never really did a western western.

It never occurred to me to be an actor.

I think I was born at a time when an American male had so many advantages and opportunities that weren't available to men before or after, just a very brief period.

I prefer to conduct my life based on how I treat people.

Anybody doing something brings something to it.

'Secretariat' was such a magnificent animal, unbelievably beautiful and powerful. It's always nice to see something that close to perfection, a reason to celebrate.

When you think of how history is revealed, we know certain things to be facts at certain periods of time, which turn out not to be so factual as time marches on.

I'm very much a typical midwesterner, and I don't think the condition is curable.

I love to watch good actors who surprise and amuse me.

We're all animals.

As an actor there are no drawbacks.

I don't throw things or yell.

I'd hate to see any film I'm involved in fail, especially artistically but also business-wise.

I admire sensible, kind people. They're not often famous.

My father was an exceptionally strong influence on me.

You can't take a play someone has directed and do whatever you want with it.

I don't really go through a process, it goes through me.

A dog that has rabies probably will do things it wouldn't do if it didn't have rabies. But that doesn't change the fact that it has rabies.

If I had spent as much time in the weight room as I did designing football uniforms, I probably would have had a free college education.

Scary monsters are like Hula Hoops. They come in and out of fashion.

I don't remember my life before I had children.

I know fashion can be intensely goofy, but it is something I've always taken pretty seriously.

I'm not a control maniac.

I've done quite a few big American films.

It's tough to figure out how do we compete in Europe and North America, when obviously a living wage for us is very different than a living wage in Indonesia.

I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm not treating patients.

Things are so much global and Americanised.

Every country has their problems.

Actors generally get to do things you probably shouldn't do in real life - well, at least as much as one might like to or be tempted to. Though I suppose a lot of actors just go ahead and do it, don't they?

I have at times spoken with my peers and the head of the actors' union about why we're not paid when we appear in, say, a 'TMZ' production, but there seems to be no real interest in combatting it.

You have to play your characters, not like them.

I was never a fanatical movie person.

The most evocative thing to me is probably when a writer and a group of performers can collectively put together something compelling that asks the really simple question: 'How do we live?'

I don't need to be liked.

I don't wake up drenched in sweat because I haven't been on stage in years.

I know for a fact that a lot of actors are desperate and unhappy if their careers are not progressing at what they think is the correct rate. They just go crazy if they're not working. I don't feel I'd be that way. You can always get a few people together and put on a play. Maybe not in New York or L.A., but in a lot of other towns, you can.

I'm not a very skeptical person.

I don't like things too overstated in the cut or too perfect.

I'm a little bit of a fabric lunatic.

I don't mind tracksuits. At the track.

I love Chicago, but in a lot of ways it's a disappointment. You can work there for years and years, and because you're in Chicago, you don't get the recognition. It has some of the best theater in the country, but when they shoot a movie there, they bring in all their actors.

I just start with a pencil and paper. I don't want something too trendy, too fashion-forward. I don't want to make something I consider a regular person couldn't wear with blue jeans. But I don't want to make something that other people make, either - like a skinny black suit in a shiny material that you can buy anywhere.

I'll never be the biggest kind of star; I'll be like Bob Duvall, respected as an actor but a lot of people can't identify the face. I don't have the personality of a big star, or the looks of a Mel Gibson or a Paul Newman, or the style of a George C. Scott.

I think 1973 was the nadir of fashion. When you watch the coverage from that era, you're struck by the astonishing ugliness of the clothes.

I like very much to do movies.

I always wanted to be fashionable.

I go around the world, working with all kinds of people who I love.

When you do a really good play, the audience and the performers are looking into the same looking glass, the same microscope. And the specimen they are looking at is human life and that's why I do it, that's why I like it.

I am inspired by the appearance of a bohemian of the new millennium.

Politics is not really my thing.

Most filmmakers' entire body of knowledge is of other movies. When they describe things, they describe them in relation to other movies. That's why we have so many cyclical movies that look like other movies. But I'm not cynical. I even go to some of those movies.

Sigmund Freud said we act out our own dreams, but if you are only an actor you are not acting out your own dream. You are simply participating in someone else's dream.

I believe in humans.

Most films, it doesn't matter if you see them or not.

I probably have more female friends than any man I've ever met. What I like about them is that almost always they're generally mentally tougher, and they're better listeners, and they're more capable of surviving things.

I mean, anything that money can be made off will never be a problem to make, no matter what it is.

I think with actors, if you just don't set about trying to crush their confidence immediately, you're usually OK.

I have driven school buses, sold egg rolls and painted houses, and I have often wondered what my life would have been like if I hadn't gone into acting. Mind you, it's a great life, going around pretending you're other people and getting paid ridiculous sums of money for it.

Well, I design costumes because I started with the theater in Chicago, but somehow a few lines just sort of fell to me to do it. And I studied it in school and I always liked it.

I can see how, given a certain degree of sensitivities, proclivities and rage, I could have ended up differently.