Top 148 Quotes & Sayings by Robert Downey, Jr. - Page 3

I thought that the grounded-ish nature of the first Iron Man and where I think the success of it was based was I think people got excited that this was a technologically possible occurrence; and didn't Obama order an Iron Man?

You have to give people something to actually write music so that you're not just running your mouth all the time.

Every time I feel that I really hit critical mass and I'm in the right place is when I feel like the director and I become a third thing, and that's the character.

I, personally, would be shocked if we went to the end of the tape now and I didn't have at least one... Look, even if I don't get one directly, eventually they're just going to have to give me one when I get old. So no matter how you slice it, I'm getting one.

The audience can feel the subtleties of the characters.

I think paranoia goes from generation to generation. It's convenient to imagine that there's a few people controlling everything, that way it's manageable and small. But that's not life, life is messy.

I really don't want to thank my wife because I could be bussing tables at the Daily Grill right now if not for her. Jesus, what a gig that'd be.

I never know when the seeds are being laid, I'm just like, "Wow, that's a pretty cool scene. Is that? Are we laying seeds here?"

I think the goal is to make a well written scene seem like it's improvised and/or to come up with things that you find in the room that you couldn't have known until you get into the real situation, just try to improve things as you go along.

I guess the main thing is, you unconsciously take things for granted, and you think the audience is with you, because you're with yourself.

I felt like a fighter who was training for a title bout that had not been booked yet.

I think a hero is someone who, if abroad or traveling, they go to the GOOP website to see what shops to go to, what restaurants to eat at, what clothes to buy, and they do that not fearlessly but in spite of their fear.

Pick a dysfunction and it's a family problem.

I wouldn't want to see anything irreparable happen, but I also like it when seemingly irreparable thing occur and men and women find a way to move past it.

I didn't have an identity. It was manufactured. My identity now? It was written on the wall by ancient forces.

Tofu is the root of all evil, and there's only one thing that can change a man's mind, and that's a modified Uzi with an extra-long clip.

I've always felt like such an outsider in this industry. Because I'm so insane I guess.

Sometimes everything you need to know to be an actor in your mid-forties, you learn before you were 15 years old.

I know if you talk faster and use more ten-dollar words than everyone around you, you convince half of them that they should shut up because you know what you're talking about.

Whenever I watch someone doing something, even if it doesn't turn out so great, I at least admire their intentions and stuff.

And I think for a man whose native tongue is Spanish to be able to put together a phrase like 'cultural genocide' just speaks to how bright he is.

It's become this really odd thing where even some of the folks who build the things that we wear for entertainment are contacted by DARPA-esque companies who are saying, "Yeah, we're really doing that, and we want to talk to you."

I'm not used to studios being ecstatic about we did and saying, "Please go do that again."

It was a democracy in the truest and most frustrating and most rewarding sense of the word. Anybody could come in and say, "You know, I'm just not cool with that." We'd be like, "Who's that?" "Oh, I was just cleaning the trailers." It was nuts.

I saw School of Rock, and I was like, why haven't I worked with Richard Linklater already? Then by the time I got him I was like, I'm really pissed off I feel like you owe me some retroactive swag. He gave me the 10-year anniversary "Dazed and Confused" T-shirt, which I still wear with relish.

The greatest thing my dad taught me came from when I called him from a phone booth and said, 'Hungry. No bus token. Please. Out of options.' He said, 'Pfft, get a job.

You can't go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary, and really understand it, and come out a liberal.

I did Air America for two reasons: to be in a movie with Mel Gibson and to make a bunch of money. And then underneath there was the hope that in doing this formulaic thing I would be launched into a whole new realm of opportunity to do A-list movies. By the time we were done, the only positive thing was meeting Mel Gibson.