Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by William Hurt - Page 2

I've made a couple of films that were a little too wide and non-specific - like 'The Doctor.'

Woody Allen asked me to improv once. I said no.

I was very lucky when I was a kid - I travelled a lot and spent a lot of time in Africa, Asia and Europe. I also chant in Sanskrit.

Every single second of extra time to work with other actors has definitely always, for me, paid off for the film. For the project. Every single extra heartbeat you could get, mutually considering the scene, was of benefit.

I am just as comfortable in Britain and France as I am in America... but nowhere is perfect.

My greatest offering is my concept. It isn't my face.

I like to work. I'm glad; I'm privileged to have work.

Defeating fear is not a light switch. For most of us, it's daily work.

I'm never happier than when I'm with my family.

I don't have any artifacts of my profession in my house; the Oscar is in storage.

I listen to XM radio because I can get so many overseas news stations.

I demand minimal for paid rehearsal and not always six weeks either.

The enemies of acting are mood and attitude and other general homogenized disruptive entities. Whereas acting is about action - doing - and unless you can figure out a way to craft in an imaginative reality to which you don't submit, you're going to be out of control. You'll flip out. The job is to be surprised.

I generally try to think of what it is I want to express and then find a way of expressing it.

I live in the county where my mother was born and buried.

Play is play, fun is fun, and work is work. They're different. I work hard; even if it's supposed to be fun for someone else, it's work for me.

Post-adolescence reaches usually into the late 30s.

I'm not going to party. I'm going to go do something that will make me break a sweat.

You can only sit on the frustration of wanting to express something for so long.

What's really frustrating with movies is the lack of improvement.

We get so intellectual that we forget that we're physical creatures.

I had great qualms about playing a man who was living. I've never met Walt McCandless, and I never will.

The art is about opening, it is not about prejudice, it is not about contempt prior to investigation. It's about endlessly trying to keep from having contempt by admitting that you don't know. Even if you know a lot compared to some other people, usually, I think, the honest experience would be: "God, how little I know! And how much I need to have compassion for myself and for other people."

I'm not comfortable with walking the red carpet in a tuxedo and seeing all the women with their boobs pushed up and all the men dressed as penguins - particularly when the subject of your film is the nature of violence and humanity.

You don't look at it as the size of the role. Quantity is not the point. You can be as thorough in 30 seconds as you can in three hours.

And I don't want to use my troubles as an example of what to do and what not to do.

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

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

When I look at a person, or a character, it is in every case the beginning of an endless journey. And I don't suppose I know where that starts. I know that I have to, like every other person, make decisions and have opinions. But I'm real careful to not judge crassly or cheaply someone else's life.

The greatest single human gift is the ability to chase down our dreams.

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

The Alexander Technique has helped me to undo knots, unblock energy and deal with almost paralysing stage fright

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

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.

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

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

But it's also another myth to think that you should be as tight as a drum and not have any frailties or fragilities.

Also CSPAN is really the great treasure of the media as far as getting information.

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

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