Top 171 Quotes & Sayings by John Malkovich - Page 3

I brought my first fall/winter line to New York, and it was confiscated by U.S. Customs. They asked, 'What is the value of this?' I said, 'I'm not so good with existential questions.'

I grew up in the Midwest, quite far from any ocean or any beach, a million miles. I think for kids who grew up where I did, the idea of California, surfing and beach life was so exotic and glamorous.

Fashion is chaotic, and it can be an aggravation, too, but it is at its best when it allows you to express yourself.

I always liked clothes; since I was very, very young, I was interested. I studied costume as part of my theatre education.

I'm a little bit phobic about stains on my clothes, so I never travel without a little packet of organic stain remover.

I am inspired by the appearance of a bohemian of the new millennium. I thought it was necessary to update the figure of the bohemian, but not in the traditional way.

I was never a fanatical movie person. There are many popular films I absolutely love like anyone else. Having said that, I don't have time to go to the movies very much. I work a lot of different things, I'm always busy. But I'm always happy to see a popular movie.

I never wanted to be with someone who just hung around the house.

My father was a very contradictory man. I mean, most environmentalists in America in the 1950s - of which there were hardly any - were not... paratroopers. But my father was in the 82nd Airborne, it was just like that.

I know I have a fairly strong feminine side. I find myself really distanced from male behavior.

What you really need to build a character is exactly what you don't have in the movies - time. You know, movies are like a line drawing. You have to make very quick decisions, which are, in the end instinctive. Or you make a decision to say "Well, maybe I can do that, because... Oh, that could be irritating after a while, or distracting, etc. etc." Some of it is a matter of time, always.

I think probably when I was little, after my brother turned on me, I just had to play by myself or with myself. I've always done that. I think either it's some kind of weirdly competitive streak or it takes my mind off whatever's bothering me.

It seems whenever I've had a method or what I perceived to be an intellectual groundwork of some sort - a kind of game plan - it's always been the most morbid failure.

For a while I wanted to be a professional baseball pitcher, and then I wanted to be a musician and then sometimes I think I'd like to start a store for gift-wrapping Christmas presents... But I feel I could do most things I set my mind to, except mechanical things, I'm not very good at that.

There's no worse feeling in the world than realizing the play you've directed doesn't work.

I've always been an avid reader. Everyone in my family read a lot. Considering we were from a little town, we were pretty literate.

Some people die before their time so that others can live. It's a cornerstone of civilization.

I wasn`t really raised to be the type of person to have doubts.

I like to direct movies, but I don't like to goof around for eight years talking about it. And it's pretty irritating to get a movie on. So to complicate it by having more irritation as a director, I don't really need it. And because I direct a great deal still, but in the theater, I kind of get that anyway. Which is not at all to say I would never do it again, or it would never happen again.

I was a very good baseball player and football player as a kid, but my father always told me - occasionally while striking me - that I was much more interested in how I looked playing baseball or football than in actually playing. And I think there's great truth in that.

To a certain extent in Hollywood you're a product, and your product is whatever sells the most, and whatever sells the most is whatever the public likes to see you do - if anything.

Art is not disposable. If you want it, you have to hold it and smell it and touch it and read the credits and enjoy it and put it on your wall.

And if you say a word about this over the radio, the next wings you see will belong to the flies buzzing over your rotting corpse.

I don't have a great intellect, and I can't compete with people who do. I feel certain things. And all I know, and all I can do, is what I feel.

The ghosts you chase you never catch.

Anybody doing something brings something to it. It's not for me to say if it's "growth". Just by the nature of everyone has a different take on the material. Some people would.

When I have failed as an actor I've always thought it was my fault. But when I direct something, I wouldn't want the actors to think it was their fault.

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

And may the best of you - for it will only be the best of you, and even then only in the rarest and briefest moments - succeed in framing that most basic of questions, 'how do we live?'

It's funny - people think analysis or psychiatry is mad, and THEY go to CHURCH.

Along with the good qualities, if someone isn't vulnerable I can't be around them to a certain extent. And I don't mean vulnerable to me or vulnerable to me in a sexual way. I just mean vulnerable, period.

I like to have fun at work. It's okay if I don't. I've had that a few times. But generally, I'm someone who has a lot of fun at work, because I like my job. I think it's a fantastic job, at least that part of it is a fantastic job. And I like to have fun, and I personally feel that whether you're talking about the cast or the crew or the director or any combination thereof, that when people feel involved and comfortable and they feel like their work is being supported, that's the best environment to do good work.

I don't really have a comprehension of being a public figure.

All you have is the writer's imagination. You have a very limited time to take this imaginary person and bring the details of their life, as you perceive them, to life. You attempt to do to that as fully and as vibrantly as you can. It's depressing to read how much you've failed. And it's not even particularly instructive or necessary to read how you succeeded because in the end don't you have to judge that?

If I hear a film clip, or I happen to see some image from a film - you go to a film festival, and they show some clip of the movies you've been in, most of the time I sit there and go, "Oh God, I should have... should have... that was terrible." But I think that's a natural part of this work, because really, your work is never over. Of course I can leave it alone and walk off the set and never think about it again when it's done. But your work is really ongoing all the time.

Reviews are destructive by their very nature.

Chicago my favourite American city. I'm very much a typical midwesterner, and I don't think the condition is curable.

The one natural gift I have is easy access. That's the only natural I gift I have at all. You have to have that, the third eye.

One doesn't know if one had a happy childhood or not. I don't really know what it means.

The theater is so disappointing, really, that it's hard to go again and again. It's just too heartbreaking. I'd rather watch football or play a game or read.

Films take too long. There's too much BS, too much nonsense. If I want to do a play, I just call the theater, whether it's here, or in Paris or Mexico or Spain or London or whatever, and say, "I want to do this, are you interested?" They'll answer the next day. With a movie, it's all, "Oh, I see this film as blah blah blah." They don't know what you're talking about, they don't care.

There are many, many benefits to being known for whatever it is you do. To deny that would be sort of asinine and vulgar.

It's a little bit hard to have personal things subject to public scrutiny, and it's a pressure that other people aren't under, but then they're under a lot of pressures that we're not under.

My father could be very distancing. My clearest memory is of him squatting, watering plants for hours and hours at a time, completely silent. He was very self-contained; my mother was more outgoing and chatty and social. I'm certainly more like her.

With acting it's your neck up there in the end. And if you think the director can't help you it's one thing. But if you feel they're reining you in when they need to be giving you some rope, or vice versa, then I just don't tolerate that.

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. And 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.

I grew tired of religion some time not long after birth. I believe in people, I believe in humans, I believe in a car, but I don't believe something I can't have absolutely no evidence of for millenniums. And it's funny, people think analysis or psychiatry is mad, and they go to church.

I have probably four or five male friends who have a real strong masculine side but some degree of a feminine side, too. They're pretty rare, whereas I think women with a masculine side are much less rare.

The media can make anything true or untrue. So if you do 80 films and you play a bad guy ten times, then you're a bad guy, and then the media repeats that.

Much of what you do as an actor - it's who's around you, what's the environment, where do you fit into this thing. That's really work that's impossible to do on your own, at least for me. I find it hard to pre-plan every element of everything I do. It's not my thing.

There will be people who hate everything you do. And some people will really love it. But that's not really different from the people who really hate it.