Top 157 Quotes & Sayings by Philip Seymour Hoffman - Page 3

Acting is so difficult for me that, unless the work is of a certain stature in my mind, unless I reach the expectations I have of myself, I'm unhappy. Then it's a miserable existence. I'm putting a piece of myself out there. If it doesn't do anything, I feel so ashamed. I'm afraid I'll be the kind of actor who thought he would make a difference and didn't. Right now, though, I feel like I made a little bit of difference.

I don't know, I was young, I drank too much, you know, so I stopped. You know what I mean, it's not really complicated. I had no interest in drinking in moderation. And I still don't. Just because all that time's passed doesn't mean maybe it was just a phase. That's you know, that's who I am.

All over the world, young men and young women will always dream dreams.

I always knew where I needed to go but I sometimes had a problem getting there, so I had to work harder at it. Once in a while I'd wanna take off the blouse and heels because I'd get that "I just wanna be a guy" feeling I had when growing up.

Bob Glaudini, the writer, he's a wonderfully talented man and all his plays and his screenplays, they all have sense of something bigger, even though you're looking at something very simple.

I was probably finding my feet more than anybody. I really have to say I was more obsessed with myself faltering than anybody else.

Acting's difficult for me because I think you have to be passionately involved in what you're doing.

The film is made in the editing room.

Women are the life force we look at for their beauty.

I was a breed of people who aren't capable of doing anything, really. At college I began to get the idea that being macho wasn't the accepted norm in the liberal world, and especially the world I entered into, which was the artistic world. I had a lot of problems with that because I was struggling with the need to be proud of being a man, which wasn't something I was feeling.

Ultimately, all characters have some negative and positive energies. That's just how I see it. I didn't go out looking for negative characters; I went out looking for people who have a struggle and a fight to tackle. That's what interests me.

If you get a chance to act in a room that somebody else has paid rent for, then you're given a free chance to practice your craft.

I do feel like all the people I meet, all the people I'm in discussions with, if I'm working with somebody, I sense the same energy that everybody is suffering from the same predicament.

Life is short. Time is short. As we get older, time does quicken. It's long, and it's long pertaining to that thought, that the past is not done with you because you can't rid of it.

I think good art, if I could be pretentious enough to say, I think good art deals with the micro to explain the macro.

My mother's a staunch feminist, so I grew up with very strong feminist messages. As a result, I battled her in my teenage years because my image of being a man was a deformed one.

When you read, you think, and when you smoke, you think. It's a pleasurable thing, and not a duty.

If I'm directing actors, I learn about acting that way. If I'm acting, I learn about directing that way. Producing is just something that's come about because there's projects I find interesting that I would like to help get done.

We really enjoy that, having a relationship with writers, developing material and getting a director, actors, that we have kind of that family kind of as a group we're going to do it together mentality in a project. Then the tough part is - so what actually goes has very little to do with us sometimes.

A self-awareness moment. All of a sudden everything he has done comes flashing into his mind, a self-criticism that is unbearable.

[Truman Capote] was not only just selling his writing, but he was selling himself as a person.

Sometimes I take a temperature of things just because everyone else does. Especially when I'm doing a play. I want to know what people are thinking, positive or negative.

I know that obviously, that if you want to get the story, if you want to get close to somebody, if you want to find out what is really the truth or what's really interesting, you have to create a trust between these two things, between the journalist and the subject.

In order for something to be born, something has to die.That's not always, but there is something about that that I find to be true. That is, it's a natural thing.

You have to have a personal connection. You have to really want to do it, because if you don't, investing yourself personally, your thoughts, your emotions, yourself into a part, is something you're not going to want to do as much.

With "Good Night, and Good Luck," I think it's kind of obvious what [Truman Capote]'s getting at there, and the importance of how it's playing out today, that is journalism doing, are the journalists doing their job, are they being the other checks and balances in our country that the way that obviously Edward R. Murrow was back then.

There's things that you don't want to do and they keep haunting you and following you. Bennett Miller directed this project [Capote], who is a friend of mine since I was 16, and Danny Futterman wrote it, and he's also been a friend of mine since I was 16.

When you're playing someone who really lived, you carry a burden, a burden to be accurate.

I have three children and I think I'm happy when I'm with them and they're okay. When I see them enjoying each other in front of me, and then they let me enjoy them in turn. That brings a feeling which I would say is happiness.

Frankly, I get much more sensitive about what's written about me than how I look in a photo. I'm so used to people seeing my image in plays and films that what they think about how I look is none of my business. If they says, "Hey, he doesn't look good," I'm like, Whatever, because I know I look different from day to day. But if you're up there putting your heart into something and people reject your performance, that's very painful. The written word can kick your ass.

When you see the carrot at the end of the stick, what do you do to get it? These kinds of things that come up, that come up in the story of Capote writing "In Cold Blood," and when you see the movie, you'll see what I'm talking about.

Being with a kid always takes you to being a kid somehow, and they really are showing me a childhood I might not have had in some way.

I feel like the need to want to create and make something is stronger than the difficulties are going through.

When you think about [Truman] Capote in the - was what he did exploitative of a person's life or exploitative of these murders? You look at our culture now, you look at celebrity and how it plays out in our culture now, and Capote was one of the great PR men of his time.

When you're acting, you're subjective; when you're a director, you're more objective.You're kind of watching from the outside and helping others, and therefore I learn my mistakes through others, and also my assets through others.

I would never not work on the part without it playing. That's what being an actor is. You use everything that's influenced you to help you get out of yourself or be more creative.

If all people are encouraged to actually see who they're coexisting with, or even if they're not coexisting with other people.It's like to look at the world you're in.