Top 87 Quotes & Sayings by Kiefer Sutherland

I love collecting guitars, even though I can't play well. My favourite guitarists are Richie Blackmore, Jimmy Paige, and John Mayer.

If your ethics in the military, in your training, is going to be counterminded by a one-hour weekly television show, we've got a really big problem.

My focus on 9/11 was on the victims - in the towers, in the planes - and all that loss.

There are two things that Jack Bauer never does. Show mercy, and go to the bathroom.

There's a confidence that comes from youth and not knowing better. But there comes a point, as an actor, when you do know better, and that is when the fear starts.

I couldn't see my father's films because they were restricted and we didn't have videos or DVDs back then.

I'm always jumping in my seat or gasping during a good horror movie.

The writers keep managing to turn the show in on itself, coming up with something that's well thought-out and miraculous.

When I started, with films like 'The Bay Boy' and 'Stand by Me', I look back on those interviews and I'm amazed; there's no mention of my father; it's not even 'son of Donald Sutherland.' I caught a bit of a break in that it never felt like a weight to me.

When Julia and I broke up and I was really scared to go into a market or anywhere because I thought, 'Oh God, everyone must hate me. And that wasn't the case. People said, 'I'm sorry this happened, man. Are you alright?'

There are three things we need to do for a band. We need to make a great record; we need to get the record played; and we need to find an audience for the live shows.

If you are going to do something potentially for another eight years, you want it to be something that you can really sink your teeth in and that's going to be different and interesting for this next period of time.

I didn't realize that television has gone through immense changes and has become very progressive.

I like chatting with people. If people ask me a direct question, I give them a direct answer and I feel I've always done that with the press.

I am a bit obsessive about tidiness. I need to make my bed in the morning and leave it perfectly made up.

My whole mood or sense can change by virtue of the music that I'm listening to. It really does affect me on a visceral and emotional level.

I've made films that I've given all I had to, that no one has seen. The bottom line is I want to work and I want someone to enjoy it.

I had an unbelievable experience on '24'. We shot 198 episodes, and I was as excited about shooting the 198th as I was the first.

I was 20 when my daughter was born, and making all these plans during my wife's pregnancy. I was going to be the perfect father. Once she was born, it was suddenly, 'Oh, my God! I'm a parent!'

Some days I'm in better control and can navigate my way through stuff, and other days, not so much.

When we shoot 24, there are so many things I have to worry about, from the script to technical things to my performance, that I don't have a second to be bored or take anything for granted. We produce 24 hours of film a season, which is like making 12 movies.

My parents not only did it for a living, but they were really good at it.

Some people think it's because '24' was jump-started by what happened on 9/11. That was never why we made the show. We started production six months prior to 9/11, and we'd already done ten episodes.

One of the big draws of the show is here's a guy who is ordinary in a lot of ways but, due to his profession, he's placed in extraordinary situations that he has to make right with action and with thought. That's what is appealing about Jack - he takes charge.

My mother's five-foot-two, and I'll be honest with you - she's the only person I'm scared of.

I loved '24', but I didn't think anyone else would. I had absolutely no idea.

I do believe very strongly that all of us and all of the other things in the context of our planet with Mother Nature, all of these things absolutely have a profound effect.

I have a very strong political outlook, and that is something I'd like to take more responsibility for in my life. I don't believe in utilising certain aspects of the power I have with celebrity to push that forward, but I would like to make some films that address some of those political issues.

There are a lot of movies I'd like to throw away. That's not to say that I went in with that attitude. Any film I ever started, I went in with all the hope and best intentions in the world, but some films just don't work.

Youth is an amazing thing: I think back on when we did The Lost Boys, and I didn't think I could do anything wrong.

You can't ask the press to service you with everything that they have and not expect some of the other stuff in return if you're going to live your life like I have.

I think that the day you've figured out the differences between women and men is the day that you're no longer attracted to women. It's the difference that is so fantastic and frustrating and angering, and really sexy.

When I was younger, my whole sense of self-worth was based on whether or not I was working, which was awful. And I had a baby at 20 years old, so it wasn't just about me. At around the age of 30 there was a stretch where I wasn't working - certainly not on anything I liked, anyway - and I started to do other things.

I would love to do '24' until I was 60, but I don't think anybody would accept it.

I've had some amazing people in my life. Look at my father - he came from a small fishing village of five hundred people and at six foot four with giant ears and a kind of very odd expression, thought he could be a movie star. So go figure, you know?

I think the most attractive thing is a sense of humour. If someone can make you laugh, you've gotten a lot out of the way.

When I wasn't the flavor of the week or month or day, those were hard times.

When I saw Virginia Woolf, somewhere between the first and second acts, someone I had known as my mother became somebody else.

I feel extraordinarily peaceful when I'm watching the sun set.

I'm a huge fan of Canadian rock-and-roll. When I was growing up, Rush came out with a record called Hemispheres, and I must have listened to that record for two years straight. Even when I was asleep I had it on. So, yeah, whenever I hear a Rush tune, the first thing I think of is Toronto.

I did a play called Throne of Straw when I was 11, at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles. It became really clear to me at that point that I enjoyed acting more than any other experience I was having.

The biggest mistakes I made in my career were when I said, 'If I do this movie, I'll be able to do a couple more movies.' Those are the times I really got ugly.

'24' and 20th Century Fox and Sky TV are not responsible for training the U.S. military. It is not our job to do. To me, this is almost as absurd as saying, 'The Sopranos' supports the mafia, and by virtue of that, HBO supports the mafia.'

When you're a young actor you like to go for characters with a bit of flair, so in many films I ended up playing the weirdos. I can assure you I'm not a psycho or a criminal or a bully.

I've always traveled with a picture of my daughter from 1989, her kindergarten school picture, that has 'I love you, Daddy' written on it. She's always made fun of me because I never changed that picture out. It's like my resistance to her getting older. It was the first thing she'd ever written to me and it means the world to me.

There are aspects of '24' where I love its politics and aspects where I hate them.

Yes, I do believe that there is a cause and effect and a ripple effect upon everything everybody does, and they have positive consequences and negative consequences. If you start to focus on the kind of minutia of that, it's really quite extraordinary.

I'm not that complicated as an actor. I have a formula in which I work, yeah. But not like Sean Penn does. Sean is one of the few actors I know who can work like that, actually becoming the character he is playing, and get consistent results. I don't believe you can ever be someone else. You manifest different levels of your own personality to come up with a character.

If you take a look at our natural history, there's always a moment where the young lion wants to challenge the older lion and, inherently, that's going to be problematic, and I don't think we're any different.

Love is a self-manifested notion depending on how lonely you are - so if you're really attracted to someone, and you're really lonely, I think you can fall in love in an instant. It's all about where you're at.

I liked the ceremony, the ritual of preparing cocaine, as much as doing it. I did it for a year, loved it, then stopped. Now I feel the same way about cooking.

There's a confidence that comes from youth and not knowing better.

Isn't it funny? You hear a phone ring and it could be anybody. But, a ringing phone has to be answered doesn't it?

The most significant piece of advice my father gave me early on about acting was, don't get caught acting. Really believe in what you're doing and then commit to it. Even if it feels uncomfortable, even if you feel that you're gonna look like an ass. It's all acting, but find the truth in a moment as opposed to just pretending you have and rather than trying to act your way out of it.

I wasn't trying to do a play or do what Kevin Spacey did. I was trying to do my own thing with it.

I think the father-son dynamic is interesting. I don't have a male friend who hasn't had some kind of conflict with their dad, and I don't have a male friend who hasn't had some kind of conflict with their son.

I've always been shocked that people that I'm actually flying with say, 'Oh, I feel safer on the plane with you.' I'm thinking, 'You must not watch the show because everybody around me gets killed.'

If your ethics in the military, in your training, is going to be counterminded by a one-hour weekly television show we've got a really big problem.

When we shoot 24, there are so many things I have to worry about, from the script to technical things to my performance, that I dont have a second to be bored or take anything for granted. We produce 24 hours of film a season, which is like making 12 movies.

I've done some stupid things. You just have to take responsibility, go, That was embarrassing, and move forward as best you can.