Top 125 Quotes & Sayings by Richard Gere - Page 2

Movie acting is primarily listening. If you're really engaged, that's all a movie audience wants to see is you processing what's happening in your world.

I just had a device made that fits in your mouth and juts your jaw out like you have an underbite. It locks in that position to keep your throat passage open when you sleep. This is the sacrifice I make for my wife. It was either this device or me sleeping in the other room.

If you have any question in your mind, don't do it. If you go in thinking it's going to fix something that's wrong, don't do it.

There are times when telling lies are not a bad thing. It can be a compassionate thing. But to make it benign, you have to be aware of your compassionate reasons for telling that lie.

I think movies probably are a mirror in some way so we can see ourselves in them.

If you have a built-in level of respect and trust and openness to essentially be yourself, it allows for a deeper uncensored communication [with your partner].

I don't regret anything. Everything happens for a reason-it's part of the healing process. Life is a healing process.

I'd bought a lot of really challenging, cutting-edge Joel-Peter Witkin photographs very early on. There were severed heads and amputated feet and hands in them - gruesome stuff. I had them all around the house, and if someone couldn't relate to it in some artistic way and instead just said "Yuck," then there probably wouldn't have been anywhere for us to go.

The idea that you're completing someone else in a marriage to me is death. That to me is a false start and most of us are usually taught that ... you've got to stand on your own. Then you can build something extraordinary.

His Holiness [the Dalai Lama] has told me, urgently and repeatedly, that he thinks my photographs are crap. His exact words were, 'These photos are of poor quality. Why is there no sharp focus? There is no clarity!' I said, 'But your Holiness, it's Goyaesque.' And he said, 'No! It's out of focus!'

On a movie set that works, you have your father figure, the director, you have your siblings, your other actors.

Julia [Roberts]. She's got two kids and animals, and I think she's a night nibbler. There'd be crumbs everywhere.

The idea of fixing of healing is an important part of any genuine spiritual approach. Kabbalah is very much about this idea of fixing of things that have been damaged. From a Buddhist point of view, things have been damaged because ignorance has intoxicated the mind.

I've always said it's flattering to be desired, just as it's flattering that people accept the reality of the character you play. But it was always ridiculous to assume that because I could play a gigolo on screen I'd play anything like that role off screen.

I do my work as an actor, but another part of my work goes to the piece as a whole. I can be fairly detached looking at my work and be brutal on myself.

I've always maintained that all characters and all personalities are in all of us. The whole thing is available. You're not this or that, no one is.

Anything that's expanding the mind and heart is happiness. But it's not a goal.

If the United States marches into Iraq without the backing of the United Nations, that will be done entirely without the backing of the American people.

We've had too many World AIDS Days.

[on editing of the films] There is always a question of time, and the director. I've worked with a lot of directors who don't mind my involvement. They appreciated it.

In a situation like this, of course you identify with everyone who's suffering. (But we must also think about) the terrorists who are creating such horrible future lives for themselves because of the negativity of this karma. It's all of our jobs to keep our minds as expansive as possible. If you can see (the terrorists) as a relative who's dangerously sick and we have to give them medicine, and the medicine is love and compassion. There's nothing better.

I have to admit, a manicured look works for me.

I don't meet many people that are evil. I meet human beings who are flawed, who are mentally ill and have enormous problems, but I don't think I've ever met someone who was a totally dark energy that had no humanity or sense of love or affection for anything in their life. That's very rare.

When you get up in the morning, set your motivations.

I can’t remember that I was ever looking for anything. I was waiting for something to touch me. It’s like, I’ll be open to it, and see if it moves me. There has to be a "falling in love" moment.

Always walk towards open doors. And if they slam shut in your face, kick that sucker in and keep going.

If people lose their land, they have nothing. You lose your land - you lose your culture, you lose self.

You've all heard some rumors about me over the years. I guess this is the moment to do it. My name is Richard Gere and I am a l*sbian.

There is a way of looking at an awful place from a certain angle that allows it to take on a beauty because it is what it is.

It's human nature - we want to believe our children, our families, our President!

Why is it when we have 10 million people in this country who say 'No', we still have a president who says 'Yes.' In a democracy, something's wrong here.

I don't mean to toot my own horn, but if Jesus Christ lived in Chicago today, and he had come to me and he had five thousand dollars, let's just say things would have turned out differently.

In the process of developing a character, you do, in fact, start to take him on as a personality. It's part of my job.

Sharon Stone. She is one of the most dedicated people I know, but also highly unedited.

It was important for me to have a partner who was ballsy.

I find that you can use an acting technique when the thing isn't working, not that you make the technique the end result of your work. You use the technique when you're in trouble and things aren't flowing the way they should. It's a way of fooling yourself to make it work again.

People are always talking about freedom. Freedom to live a certain way, without being kicked around. Course the more you live a certain way, the less it feel like freedom. Me, uhm, I can change during the course of a day. I wake and I'm one person, when I go to sleep I know for certain I'm somebody else. I don't know who I am most of the time.

One of the joys of being an actor is that you're always learning new things. And I've been doing this since I was 19, so there's been a lot of new things I have learned for each part. I always assume that I can do it.

I haven't worked with people who are jealous or competitive. That's a particularly deadly attitude to have when you're working on a film.

It's rare that a good writer will sit down and write a good script. Writers are greedy too, and they don't want to work without getting paid. But quality will find its way out.

People are expecting me to be a certain way all the time. It's not like if I come in here with a totally different personality and right before the camera starts they see this new character. It confuses everything. Life has a consensus reality to it and if you use that to your advantage it makes it much easier.

I honestly do not think about celebrity or image or sexual expectations on me. It only comes up when people have a list of questions. But what I am told is that there is a quality that I have onscreen, where it's a little bit of everything.

Everyone seems to think they know what acting techniques are. Techniques just help you get to a certain place, but if the thing is happening just by itself you don't need those techniques.

Relationships are like sharks. They've got to keep going into deeper, colder water, sometimes scarier, darker territories ... to stay alive.

I always remember what Bob Dylan said in that [Martin] Scorsese documentary on him. When he was asked about Joan Baez's complaints about the way he treated her when they were together, Dylan laughed and said, "It's impossible to be in love and wise at the same time."

As custodians of the planet it is our responsibility to deal with all species with kindness, love, and compassion. That these animals suffer through human cruelty is beyond understanding. Please help to stop this madness.

Things come out of nowhere, and you start evaluating the director, the cast, and all those other things going into it.

When I am in Tibet, I am very happy. The Tibetans radiate. They literally send out light. The Dalai Lama's holiness generates love and compassion to every human being. He has committed himself to that. I haven't made that leap yet. I haven't given up self-aspiration. I still love making movies.

(Sometimes when) someone's directing for the first time, they're afraid to include everyone - they have to prove they're the director.

To read your own mind is to look at your self and read your soul. Hatred becomes love and that is the path I am working on

Shooting in New York can be a problem... I had to walk through a crowd, come in the front door, and play the scene.

I'm rarely in a situation where, if you have a good idea, it's not embraced. That's stupid. And I don't work with stupid people.

I can see the character in a photograph, in the way a guy stands or holds his hands, the way he buckles his belt. I fantasize a lot looking at photographs. I'm sure that doesn't work for many people.

I know who I am. No one else knows who I am. If I was a giraffe, and someone said I was a snake, I'd think, no, actually I'm a giraffe.

I think that as human beings we tend to compartmentalize, and we have a selective morality based on the situation we're in.

The reality is, we can change. We can change ourselves. We can change our minds. We can change our hearts. And therefore the universe changes.

People get offended by animal rights campaigns. It's ludicrous. It's not as bad as mass animal death in a factory.

America has never paid any attention to other people, so it's absurd for Bush to say that it's all in the best interests of the Iraqi people.

If you can see the terrorists as a relative who's dangerously sick and we have to give them medicine and the medicine is love and compassion. There's nothing better.

A lot of making a movie is the comfort level of the people. It's just feeling open. We need to get along. We have to know something about each other.