Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by William Hurt

I don't put the truth in a cage. I try to find a way to release it.

I am not a famous person at home - I'm just a guy here. I'm a father, I'm a companion, I'm a human being. I am not a public figure in my house; I am not a celebrity. I am not a famous person to myself - I am just a guy.

Being a father, being a friend, those are the things that make me feel successful.

I was a science fiction junkie for a long time.

All I know is that my best work has come out of being committed and happy.

The funnel of deep feeling and profound satisfaction in life comes from the capacity to feel.

You get older, and people start passing away. And so if you're lucky - my mom died very young, for instance, and I have friends who died very young - but the point being that, I think if you're awake, you know you're going to pass on. And that the real treasure in life is the long term - relationships that you really value.

The simple fact of existence, of being aware that you are aware; this to me is the most astounding fact.

Fame... it's been a challenge, let's put it that way. It's a privilege and a responsibility, and I'm not sure I carried the responsibility well at times, which is embarrassing. And I've had to look and be disappointed in myself occasionally for how I behaved in some circumstances.

My first cousin, by the way, on my father's mother side was John Marshall Harlan, who was a Supreme Court justice, as was his grandson. And I think a lot of my fight and my work to struggle for fairness and the techniques of theater and in subject matter probably stems in some way from some sense I have of his issues in life.

David Cronenberg knows what we actors do as artists.

I didn't study interviews. I studied acting.

Celebrity is a pathological sickness of the culture. Narcissists on screen being consumed by narcissists off-screen.

I'm coming from the notion that acting is an art. It is not a business. It is about building characters, not about selling personalities.

I've been delighted by Cannes and Toronto but I keep saying I don't know how good we're going to be received in America because that's where it's most challenging.

Sometimes people call me a success for all the reasons that make me think I'm a failure.

When you are a kid, you are beset by fears, and you think, 'I'll solve the fear by living forever and becoming a movie star.'

I haven't planned a reaction on anything... If you do, you've screwed up.

For as privileged an actor as I have been, TV as a standard is short shrift. They have to do it so quickly that they don't stop and take a look. They just shoot. So that's one of the reasons I typically stay away from it. I think art is an act of consideration, and if you're not considering, I don't think you're really doing mankind a favor.

I don't want my children to have to wade through the crap to get to the cream, you know. I want them to be aware that I struggled to live with and tell my truth, and that it was a decent thing.

We'd like to prearrange our life on all levels. We'd prefer it to be scripted. But it's not.

I very much prefer the balance in a scene to standing out and so you have to make a decision.

The problem with Google is you have 360 degrees of omnidirectional information on a linear basis, but the algorithms for irony and ambiguity are not there. And those are the algorithms of wisdom.

Great risks come in long term, tremendously assiduous, very courageous study.

I'm an actor. I play roles in films and theaters. I don't act out, and I don't play people.

But I am not going to live for ever. And the more I know it, the more amazed I am by being here at all.

I just looked at him because I want to be looking in someone's eyes when I die.

I think acting can bring you closer to yourself and help you understand other people.

You have to create a track record of breaking your own mold, or at least other people's idea of that mold.

I have never worked with anyone who I hold in higher esteem than Chris Menges. He's an absolute, bona fide, authentic artist.

You cut off the capacity for grief in your life, and you cut off the joy at the same time. They both come up through the same tunnel. You don't have one without the other.

I need six weeks of rehearsal and women need nine months and it took me 15 years to figure that out.

I have a film I want to direct. Gena Rowlands was going to do it with me a long time ago. It's about an older woman who's running a ranch in the west the old fashioned way.

I was held hostage and almost executed by a man who was robbing us in the middle of the night.

The thing is, I don't believe in most of what's done. The amount of financial and imaginative energy that's put into mediocrity is just amazing which I find to be fundamentally offensive as a human being.

The irony is that the more specific you are in the portrayal of character, the more like other people you are. In the same way, the more you think about how alone you are in this life, you realise how much a brother and sister everyone else is.

It was the moment I learned acting is not acting out. After that light went on, I spent the rest of my life trying to figure out how to make other people realize it.

People who have expertise or the luck to have rehearsal time with cameras have it over people who don't.

It just seems like that because I do a lot of independent films that don't get to the mainstream.

The point is that there are challenges within techniques. When you differentiate in technique, you challenge yourself; you ask yourself the same question in a new way.

I have a way of synthesizing. That's what I would encourage any young person to do: take in the ideas, the conflicts, and the world. Watch and listen and live before you go public.

If you don't exercise, you don't stay strong. I like to work with talented people.

Not to be offensive, not to be capricious, not to be arbitrary, not to be neurotic, not to be an actor outer, you're just trying to get in and you're given so little time to get in gently, but it's always hard.

It's been a long comeback. Things were pretty dark for me. But I have a faith now, and it saves my day. I was angry with God for a long time because I was unhappy with me. I hadn't learned to make the distinction between God and my parents. But there's a peace now. In the end, I got sick and tired of being sick and tired.

I am so thrilled by the privilege of life, and yet at the same time I know that I have to let it go.

Rage with panache.

I want to prove a point. That point is, actors are artists, not narcissists necessarily.

I know what I love about acting - and it's the creative process.

The perfection in theater is that it's over the second it's done.

Being famous is not something that would make me feel successful - unless one was striving for mediocrity.

The thrill of acting is the discovery part, so it all changes, but it has to change in a way that fits what is written. You can't just wander off and get interested in your own tangent.

If you're lucky, and not a lot of actors are these days, you get the chance to create a character.

I'm not there to tailor the role to me: I'm there to tailor me to the role. That guarantees me something, a precious thing, which is creativity. I'm guaranteed that I will have a creative experience, because I will go to it, not demand that it comes to me.

Heroes to me are guys that sit in libraries. They absorb knowledge and then the risks they take are calculated on the basis of the courage it took to become replete with knowledge.

I am constantly asked, 'What's the difference between acting in the theater and acting in film?' The only answer I can give is the space - you adapt to the space. But acting is acting.

There's fear or faith. If you're living by fear, then you're always looking for security. If you're living by faith, then you're always looking for freedom.

Where did I study? I went to P.S. 6. I went to Collegiate, Middlesex, Tufts, Juilliard.

I grew up in the South Pacific. Basically, my brothers were Guamanian. I spoke words of Guamanian long before I spoke words of English, and so I've seen a lot. You know, I've traveled in places where people don't have the benefits of American life. And so I've seen a lot of stuff.

The achievement is appreciation. Your ability to be surprised and awed by beauty!

The thing is David is also aware of everything and it's not like you're going somewhere the director is not.