Top 136 Quotes & Sayings by Peter O'Toole - Page 2

Every three or four years, I'm hot again.

I have unqualified admiration for Brad Pitt.

Right after I left drama school, I had a job.

It's such a relief for me to sit in front of a tape recorder and not be using it to learn my lines.

I quite like being old.

Public crucifixion is no fun.

Actors have given up their clout. Now decision making is in the hands of lighting men, designers, bankers, special-effects people. We need to cut that out and just go with the most able trained actors in the business.

A rubber neck is a necessary part of equipment.

There are only three indispensable things: the audience, the actor and the author. The rest is dross.

It's a razor's edge, a romance with an old man and a young woman.

No one ever watched competitive swimming.

When I'm doing theatre, I prefer to be doing cinema. When I'm doing cinema, I prefer to be doing theatre.

An Oscar is a symbol that is known in every corner of the world.

You know when you've found a part that you want to play. You know it because the part takes you over. It sits in the script waiting for you to play him.

I've done everything that's possible to be done.

I suggest that an education and reading and facts aren't bad things on which to ponder a few notions.

All the minor sports injuries you acquire over the years begin to multiply like flies when you get over 70.

No one should ever know where conduct ends and acting begins. Conduct unbecoming. That's what acting is.

I had a son born to me when I was 50, and I thought, 'He needs someone to bowl to him.'

I've played farce on the stage, but I have never played any sort of comedy on the screen.

A few years back I was asked if I would go and meet a director and his various acolytes, and it occurred to me halfway through the meeting that what I was doing was auditioning. And I thought, 'Well, hang on buddy. I've done half a century of this.'

My dad went at 86. A car killed him. He was crossing the road.

People talk about the '60s, but they were merely a mass production of what the '50s had begun.

In my day England, Scotland, Wales had 80 drama schools. There are none left. So there's no training, no discipline.

Question: How do you know you're God? Answer: Simple. When I pray to him, I find I'm talking to myself.

There are only two things one has to bear in mind. One has to be credulous - able to believe - and skeptical - able to not believe, because if you are not skeptical, you will believe rubbish. If you are not credulous you will learn nothing and the only way to balance those two is to recognize the mystery of things.

When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself.

A victory? What have we won? We've won a rock in the middle of a wasteland, on the shores of a poisoned sea.

Booze is the most outrageous of drugs which is why I chose it.

If you can't do something willingly and joyfully, then don't do it. If you give up drinking, don't go moaning about it; go back on the bottle. Do. As. Thou. Wilt.

I'm a very physical actor. I use everything - toes, teeth, ears, everything. I don't simply mean physical in the sense of movement and vigour. I find myself remembering the shape of a scene by how I'm standing, what I'm doing.

No one can take Jesus away from me.... There's no doubt there was a historical figure of tremendous importance, with enormous notions. Such as peace.

George Eliot is my only steady girlfriend. We go to bed together every night.

I'm not working-class: I come from the criminal classes.

I will not be an ordinary man, because I have a right to be extraordinary.

Everyone praises Sachin Tendulkar. He may be a genius in his own right but in my book, Rahul Dravid is the artist. Dravid's defence tactics, his strokes, his cuts, his grace are truly amazing. I'd like to meet the chap sometime and take my hat off to him.

Acting has been described as farting about in disguise.

It distresses us to return work which is not perfect.

If you cannot say what you mean, your majesty, you will never mean what you say and a gentleman should always mean what he says.

I did quite enjoy the days when one went for a beer at one's local in Paris and woke up in Corsica.

I'm a professional and I'll do anything - a poetry reading, television, cinema, anything that allows me to act.

I have no intention of uttering my last words on the stage. Room service and a couple of depraved young women will do me quite nicely for an exit.

What I like is bottomless flattery.

I am human, all too bloody human.

And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.

There's a remedy for everything except death.

He's a scoundrel, young Brad Pitt, who led me, his elderly colleague, astray more than once.

I found him perhaps the least terrifying man I've ever met in the theater—because at first glance I could see through him and he could see through me, and he knew that I knew that he knew. Look, love, I've been bullied all my life by bigger experts than Larry Olivier, I can assure you, and he's just got to get in line.

I can't stand light. I hate weather. My idea of heaven is moving from one smoke-filled room to another.

I do not choose to be a common man…it is my right to be uncommon—if I can…I seek opportunity—not security…I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed… to refuse to barter incentive for a dole… I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence, the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopias….

I can't tell you about acting. You can develop all the skills, voice, gesture, movement, you can develop by exercise and practice but finally fundamentally it's mining from yourself, from your own personality, from what you know. If you can't know it you can have a good guess by people you know or books you've read.

Many years ago I sent an old, beloved jacket to a cleaner, the Sycamore Cleaners. It was a leather jacket covered in Guinness and blood and marmalade, one of those jobs... and it came back with a little note pinned to it, and on the note it said, 'It distresses us to return work which is not perfect.' So that will do for me. That can go on my tombstone.

If man ever comes to perfect equilibrium with the environment, we'll all be redundant, perhaps because you won't need art or letters.

It was a mistake and I made the mistake because I was conservative and played safe. And that way lies failure." "Must do it... constantly go to the well... constantly try, try, try. Dare. Dare, Dare. Who dares wins.

Most difficult thing in the world, to write a play. Do you know the story of Shaw at the Fabian society? H.G. Welles said "I'm terribly sorry I've missed the last five meetings, I've been terribly busy, I'm engaged in writing a scientific pamphlet on the effects of radioactivity in 1984 and I've produced a novel, and various pieces of science fiction to do, and I've had a bit of personal trouble, and I had my copy to bring out for the newspaper." Shaw leapt up and said, "I've not missed one meeting, and I have written a play!" hardest thing in the world. If it were easy they'd all be at it.

Not everyone can become a great artist; but a great artist *can* come from *anywhere*.

Being sober for so many years is getting interesting.

The moment you start dividing thought and feeling, the ratio of sinitive from the intuitive, you're dead. There is no difference between emotion and thought. You can be unreasonable.

Marriage is forever. It's like cement.

There may be honor among thieves, but there's none in politicians.