Top 339 Quotes & Sayings by Kevin Spacey - Page 3

I can imagine there is going to come a time when someone will do 13 hours of a story without breaks.

I believe this: If an actor wants a role or wants to work with somebody, then you do everything within reason to try to get that role. If they want you to audition, you audition. If they want you to screen-test, you screen-test. If they want you to come and tap-dance in their hallway, you tap-dance in their hallway.

One can never take the cynicism one comes across in life too seriously.

My admiration for 'Mary Tyler Moore' is very, very big because they went out on top.

For years, particularly with the advent of the Internet, people have been griping about lessening attention spans.

When I look around at Broadway and the West End, theatre is becoming an exclusive club.

When you're just able to distill it down to the idea and the feeling that a character is experiencing in a scene, it can become very, very razor sharp and really clean and really efficient and simple. And sometimes it takes twenty-five years to learn how to be simple.

People have really long attention spans, and they love complicated plots. TV series are giving the audience what they want.

I was not a studious kid, and I struggled to find things that would command my attention and engage my ideas and energies.

Fundamentally, I like to accomplish things.

As a producer or financier, you are going to go where you get the best bang for your buck.

What I've certainly learned is that whenever I've said anything about real politics, I've come under attack. So it's best simply to play politics on television.

I have wanted to have children. I do want to have children.

I have long been a supporter of The Prince's Trust, and so when American Express asked me to launch 'Amex Be Inspired' and help young people build their confidence and fulfil their potential, I was delighted to get involved.

I terribly miss - we all miss, I think - somebody like the great producer Irving Thalberg. He had a foot in both camps: He understood us creative people. And he understood the money people.

If you're not concerned about maintaining an image, you can pursue roads that another actor might not take.

I became a bit of a jerk. A kind of a nasty jerk.

London is a very energising place to be.

I like being able to go to a local pub and have great food and particularly love pubs that welcome my dogs.

The more shows that are produced, the more writers are hired, producers are hired, actors are hired, directors are hired, it means the more people will get employed. It's better for the economy. It's a fantastic thing.

Anytime someone can beat the acting out of someone else, I think it's a wonderful thing.

A British director directed 'American Beauty,' an important film about American life, and it didn't matter. What only mattered was everyone's sensibility.

Partisan rancour and party politics and ideology have got in the way of compromise - and compromise is the only thing that has ever made politics successful.

I'm used to people thinking I'm nuts. And you know what? I kind of love it.

Audiences grew to like this duality of feeling, where you're both championing a character and you're revolted by them.

Working in film tends to isolate actors - it's your close-up; it's all about you.

I don't even think in terms of ambition.

It's the details and the human element that makes 'Recount' entertaining. Even though we know how the election ends, it plays like a thriller. It's also funny.

I was terrible in my first play. After that experience, I had to face that I wasn't good enough to play with the big boys. I had to go away and learn, so I worked in regional theater for three years. I even understudied at the Kennedy Center.

It's extremely dangerous to compare anyone else to Shakespeare.

The audience wants control. They want freedom.

We're going to see a lot of companies that have been portals of entertainment become producers.

I love doing impressions.

I never wanted to go to the Old Vic and not have it survive long after I was gone. It's not about me; it's about that theater. And the more that it's able to grow and do everything it should do without me, then I've done my job.

'The 24 Hour Plays' is a quite brilliant, exhilarating event for everyone concerned.

I don't watch rugby.

I believe if you go to a movie theatre, and you see something you think is incredible, if you walk out of the theatre and there was a bin in the lobby of DVDs of the film you just watched, you would buy four of them - one for you and three for your friends.

If you wanna compete, you've got to get into the original content game.

Storytelling helps us understand each other, translate the issues of our times, and the tools of theater and film can be powerful in helping young people to develop communication/collaboration skills, let alone improving their own confidence.

Why not sit around a Beverly Hills pool collecting residual cheques? That is not the kind of life I want.

I'm always taken aback by things that are successful that I think are just crap, and then I'm completely surprised when things I do end up being successful because you walk into things and you never know... It's just really remarkable.

What hasn't surprised me is that audiences, as we found starting with box sets, want control, to decide how they watch it. Appointment viewing is slowly being put slightly behind.

If there is one thing I object to, it's actors talking about how tough their jobs are.

If we don't reach out to make theatre affordable to the young generation, we will lose them all.

Exposure to the arts and culture is enormously valuable.

If you look back through history in the United States, there have been very few landslide elections. Half the country always voted for someone else.

I'm not a writer, and I don't want there to be any mistake about that.

I remember meeting the likes of Johnny Carson and Jimmy Stewart for the first time and being completely starstruck.

While the sciences are hugely important, let us not leave behind a child's imagination.

After graduation, I was floundering in L.A., doing stand-up comedy and working in a shoe store in the Valley.

No one should ever feel sorry for me. I've been treated very well for the most part.

There does seem to be in the U.S. now an ideology and an entrenchment that has stopped people doing what they are hired to do, which is govern rather than run for office the whole time.

I think people love it when anybody acts bad; it's not particular to me.

While data can only tell you what has happened in the past, it can in some ways give you a sense of what might be of interest to an audience in the future.

It's a really wonderful thing to focus your life on something other than your own personal career and ambition.

If someone can watch an entire season of a TV series in one day, doesn't that show an incredible attention span?

I have always believed that the risk takers are eventually rewarded.

I think it is just a function of the fact that I moved around so much as a child that I learnt early on to make every place my home.

When the story is good enough, people can watch something three times the length of an opera.

I want to do better. I want to produce better stories. I want to do better plays.