Top 1200 Jack Travis Quotes & Sayings - Page 20

Explore popular Jack Travis quotes.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
In 1969, when I was still living in London, I had gone with some friends to see 'Easy Rider' in a movie theater in Piccadilly Circus and had returned alone some days later to see it again. It was Jack's combination of ease and exuberance that had captured me from the moment he had come on-screen.
I would stay at my grandma's house on my birthday every year and I remember she had a bookshelf of murder mystery books along with really frightening books, like one on Jack the Ripper. She also had a poster of a shark in the closet which also terrified me at the time.
The name Derek Jeter is made for stardom. He's got an infectious smile, and he's so handsome and well-behaved. He's just a fine young man who does everything right. He's like Jack Armstrong and Frank Merriwell, guys I grew up rooting for. Some guys come along who just measure up.
Things happen or they don't happen, that's all. Nothing is accomplished by sweat and struggle. Nearly everything which we call life is just insomnia, an agony because we've lost the habit of falling asleep. We don't know how to let go. We're like a Jack-in-the-box perched on top of a spring and the more we struggle the harder it is to get back in the box.
One day [when I relapsed] I walked into a store and saw a little bottle of Jack Daniel's. And then that voice - I call it the 'lower power' - goes, 'Hey. Just a taste. Just one.' I drank it, and there was that brief moment of 'Oh, I'm okay!' But it escalated so quickly. Within a week I was buying so many bottles I sounded like a wind chime walking down the street.
I have tried my best to give the nation everything I had in me. There are probably a million people who could have done the job better than I did it, but I had the job and I always quote an epitaph on a tombstone in a cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona: "Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damndest."
It just tickles me still when you see Roger Clemens, as great as he is, throw a split-finger and the hitter just swings and misses. They don't see that ball that well. Jack Morris threw an awful good one and Mike Scott. There's a lot of great pitchers over the years that I think that pitch definitely helped their career.
It's very, very important to me, no matter who the person is, to play that person with the utmost degree of truth that I'm able to bring. But playing a character like Jack Sparrow or Willy Wonka, that requires nothing but a degree of responsibility to the intent of the story - responsibility to the film-maker to deliver the goods.
In the movies, every crazy old fart needs a cool old car. Jack Nicholson drove a spiffy yellow 1970 Dodge Challenger two-door in 'The Bucket List.' In 'Gran Torino,' the cranky pensioner played by Clint Eastwood not only owned a 1972 GT Sport, he also used to build cars like that at the Ford plant.
This ghastly state of things is what you call Bunburying, I suppose? Algernon. Yes, and a perfectly wonderful Bunbury it is. The most wonderful Bunbury I have ever had in my life. Jack. Well, you've no right whatsoever to Bunbury here. Algernon. That is absurd. One has a right to Bunbury anywhere one chooses. Every serious Bunburyist knows that.
I like California because it still has the glamour and romanticism and exoticism of a very foreign place. It was the place that when I was young, I was raised on "I Love Lucy" and listening to the Grateful Dead and reading Jack Kerouac. They, to me, were all symbols of this very foreign sense of promise and movement. After all this time here I'm glad I still have it.
I stand humbled on bended knee but, of course, the response to that would be 'Duh!' And to be given that incredible honor means that I represent the piss and vinegar, the energy, the defiance, the musicality of the Funk Brothers and Motown and Mitch Ryder and Bob Seger, Brownsville Station and Grand Funk Railroad and Eminem and Jack White and Kid Rock - are you kidding me?
It's very, very corrupting to the spirit, doing comedy. And you have to be almost a saint, like Jack Benny was, like Steve Martin is, to avoid the corrupting of it, because there's very little work where the actual work and the reward are simultaneous, and comedy is that.
I pissed off Greeks, particularly in my family, for years to come, because I popularized the word "malaka," which hitherto had not been known outside of the community. It's basically "jack off," you know? Masturbator. So I remember my mother was not pleased at the time. She was, like, "Oh, John, couldn't you have used a better word?" There's no better word, Mom!
The look of the movie and the music, which was by Jack Nitzsche, is what really stands out to me. I don't know if the movie succeeds as a political, cultural comment on the times and the war in Vietnam, and the capitalists versus the everyday guy that gets sent off to fight corporate wars. I don't know if the movie ever succeeded in that range. But it was a wonderful part in the Cutter's Way.
People say maybe I could have got better performances out of myself or I could have a got few more fights out of myself if I looked after my body a little bit more but at the end of the day it was because I was jack the lad.
Jack Nicklaus liked to curve the ball by opening or closing the clubface at address. I never felt I was good enough to do it his way. I didn't like changing my swing path, either, which some guys do. There's only one really reliable way to curve the ball: Change your hand position at address.
I've worked with Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro and Tom Hanks. I've worked with some really good directors: Woody Allen, Paul Schrader... My God, I've really worked with a lot of people. But I'm intimidated by them, and I'm always thinking, "Oh, my God, he's not going to like me, and I'm going to get fired."
The great thing about Nashville back in the day was that the old guys hung out where the young guys were. The established writers like Harlan Howard and Jack Clement gave us encouragement and passed the guitar, you know? Chet Atkins let me sit in on his sessions. Everybody was good to us, and everybody loved the music.
I was in love with a lot of people, because I was a student of the game of comedy - Carol Burnett, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Jackie Gleason, Don Rickles, Red Foxx, Moms Mabley - who gets no credit, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, George Kirby. I loved them all, and I used to just take a page out of all of them.
Jack Sturtzer, one of my cousins, had gone to art school and suggested that I might be interested in a private school called the Art Institute of Buffalo, and in fact that is what happened. So upon graduation in 1948, I then went to stay with my cousins on Seventeenth Street and enrolled in the program at the Art Institute on Elmwood Avenue.
Nira Park, who is my longtime producer and friend - I've know her since we did Spaced, the TV show - she gave me this script the last day of filming The World's End. She said, "Take a look at this. It's filming in London next year, and you might like to look at Jack." I trust Nira implicitly.
In terms of it being a first screenplay, literally, my hat is off to him [Wally Pfister]. I didn't see any virgin blather in screen direction, or anything like that. It was just a wonderfully executed piece, and a complicated one. The mathematics involved in putting this film together, between Jack and Wally, and the great support of Alcon, it was not a easy little operetta.
Do you think if it was the fairy tale about a man who lived inside of a whale and it was religion that Jack built a beanstalk today, you would know the difference? Why do you believe in one fairy tale and not the other? Just because adults told you it was true and they scared you into believing it, at pain of death, at pain of burning in hell.
When Jack Swagger copies my Ankle Lock and Randy Orton does my Angle Slam, it's disrespectful. I didn't come up with the Ankle Lock; Ken Shamrock came up with the Ankle Lock, but I waited until he retired to do the Ankle Lock.
I liked Art Linkletter's way of conducting an interview while still keeping it light and I even admired Jack Bailey, host of 'Queen for a Day.' Particularly fascinating was how he could listen to all those awful tales of woe, then smile and slap someone on the back and declare her Queen for a Day.
I'm addicted to Jack's Wife Freda, a South African - Jewish-inspired restaurant founded by my brother Dean and his amazing wife, Maya. The vibe is cool and relaxed, perfect for a daytime bite or a nightcap. I always get the Peri-Peri chicken and the kale Greek salad, but all the food is delicious. You simply cannot go wrong!
You may batter your way through the thick of the fray, You may sweat, you may swear, you may grunt; You may be a jack-fool, if you must, but this rule Should ever be kept at the front;-- Don't fight with your pillow, but lay down your head And kick every worriment out of the bed.
When I saw Bryan Singer's 'Usual Suspects,' I knew how it was going to end because I'd seen 'Scary Movie.' Which is not the preferred order of things, but that's how it is because my childhood was 'Home Alone,' 'Matilda,' 'Batman Returns,' 'Jumanji,' 'Secret Garden,' 'Jack,' 'Mrs. Doubtfire,' 'Titanic.' Only family films from the '90s.
I'd love to watch Jack Youngblood play. His tan arms hanging out of his sleeveless jersey, he'd put those pipes on the ground, and even at 240 pounds, he would show great moves and natural strength for an undersized player. He was extremely quick, had underrated strength, and he got great leverage against the tackles.
I was a journalist. I was a drummer. I was everything. I didn't know what the heck I was. But with Jack Paar, the job was very specific - no confusion. You came in each day. You wrote five pages of jokes. You handed the pages in... The pressure was to write five pages of jokes every day. I did it, and I thought, 'This is what I like to do.'
In 1995, I proposed the Harvard Arts Medal. The idea was to celebrate the fact that, although it's rare, Harvard men and women do go into the creative arts. Over the years we've had major, major figures, like Jack Lemmon, John Updike, Yo-Yo Ma, and Bonnie Raitt.
The next night he asked Jonah if he could take $9.49 out of Jonah's secret stash that only Danny and his mum and Jack knew about. Jonah kept it in his sock drawer next to a photograph of Jonah and a girl with sad eyes, taken in one of those railway station photo booths.
Jack Taylor was a private investigator in Galway, which seemed like madness. I used lots of Galway-isms, which seemed like madness, too. — © Ken Bruen
Jack Taylor was a private investigator in Galway, which seemed like madness. I used lots of Galway-isms, which seemed like madness, too.
In effect, I grew up in a sort of timewarp, a place where times are scrambled up. There are elements of my childhood that look to me now, in memory more like the 1940s or the 1950s than the 1960s. Jack [Womack] says that that made us science fiction writers, because we grew up experiencing a kind of time travel.
I don't know if tennis players feel like that but when you have a great opponent - although I didn't feel like he [ Ben Mendelsohn ] was an opponent - you just know your game is going to jack up and it's just going to raise the bar. I couldn't wait for that elevation.
America's Facebook generation shows a submission to standardization that I haven't seen before. The American adventure has always been about people forgetting their former selves - Samuel Clemens became Mark Twain, Jack Kerouac went on the road. If they had a Facebook page, they wouldn't have been able to forget their former selves.
We've got a problem!" I shouted. "No, I heard that. I mean, what's the problem now?" "I have the solution!" Jack interrupted. "What?" I sat up, all ears. "Bells!" "What?" Lend and I asked at the same time. "Get her a kitty collar with bells on it. That way you can hear her coming and get someplace where you won't be hurt by collapsing immediately into sleep.
You watch him playing Jack Sparrow, and he's loving it, and he's loving being in that world. He's still excited by it. Sometimes, he'll even say, 'Was that OK?' And I'm thinking, 'You're Johnny Depp man, you know that's OK!' But he doesn't. He's still going to [director] Gore [Verbinski] and asking for help. It's a privilege to see the human side of Johnny. It's really exciting.
When I grew up in the early '90s, the new World Wide Web felt like a gimmick, and I had no idea of the changes in store. In the summers, I'd backpack through Europe, follow the Grateful Dead. I had a car and a tent and traveled around the Great Lakes and out West. Jack Kerouac was my guiding light, his 'On the Road' a sacred text.
Little brats yellin 'Trick or Treat' all through my screen door, When y'all should be at home sleep, Instead of at my front porch 15 deep. The jack o' lantern came in handy... I can turn my porch light out like I ain't got no candy. But ain't that somethin? You buy a Halloween costume and a pumpkin, Almost gave your children a heart attack. It's a tradition, but who the hell started that?
The film-maker Alejandro Jodorowsky - his films are hard to watch - they're so dense and rich - but they're probably the best things ever made. And Spike Milligan, who was light years ahead of the rest - I played some of his stuff to Jack Black once. He'd never heard of him, so watching him listen to Spike for the first time was just hilarious.
I was never ambitious. I just wanted to have quiet, calm, listen to public radio and say, hello, how are you? Sit down, rest. But I had an early partner named Fred Freeman, a wonderful writer who I met at Northwestern. And I thought we were doing very well with "Jack Paar," and he said, no, we got to go to Hollywood. We got to write sitcom. It's the coming thing.
[Jack Nash] was very different than anything I'd played. In fact, there's a scene I have in a tent with Louis Ferreira, who just did an episode of Travelers. He was in the fourth episode of Travelers playing another team leader, and we really have it out, not unlike the way we did in the tent in Andromeda.
I guess the story that best defines us [with Bud Yorkin] and our relationship goes back to the [Dean] Martin and [Jerry] Lewis show. The four stage managers on that show became major TV creators and directors - John Rich, Jack Smight, Arthur Penn and Bud Yorkin.
It doesn't interest me to be Harrison Ford. It interests me to be Mike Pomeroy and Indiana Jones and Jack Ryan. I don't want to be in the Harrison Ford business. I take what I do seriously, but I don't take myself seriously.
I have my set rigged with the biggest sound system possible and have a mini jack for my iPod attached to my director's chair. I find playing music is a very direct way to communicate with actors and the crew, especially those crew members who are on the periphery of the set. I like dancing on set too, it's a good way to release tension.
For many a pasty have you robbed of blood, And many a Jack of Dover have you sold That has been heated twice and twice grown cold. From many a pilgrim have you had Christ's curse, For of your parsley they yet fare the worse, Which they have eaten with your stubble goose; For in your shop full many a fly is loose.
Mr. Pewter led them through to a library, filled with thousands of antiquarian books. 'Impressive, eh?' 'Very,' said Jack. 'How did you amass all these?' 'Well,' said Pewter, 'You know the person who always borrows books and never gives them back?' 'Yes...?' 'I'm that person.
Narrative nonfiction was not my forte. I always wanted to let my imagination run free, and the facts sometimes got in the way. At one point I wanted to illustrate Jack Prelutsky's enchanting poems. Unable to do that, I started devising and improvising my own poems, very raw at first. I immersed myself in verse, writing reams of stuff until it gelled.
I only wanted Uncle Vernon standing by his own car (a Hudson) on a clear day, I got him and the car. Ialso got a bit of Aunt Mary’s laundry and Beau Jack, the dog, peeing on the fence, and a row of potted tuberous begonias on the porch and 78 trees and a million pebbles in the driveway and more. It’s a generous medium, photography.
I watched horror movies way too young and one of my favorite horror movies was The Shining. Jack Nicholson's character in that just bore a hole in my brain, his weird, maniacal controlled stuff. Obviously Mara in Village of the Damned wasn't an alcoholic and didn't have emotional, crazy outbursts. She was very non-emotional. But it was that sort of evil that I was tapping into.
When I came to Hollywood, I would take the opportunity to get to know George Stevens or Willy Wyler or Billy Wilder or Freddie Zinnemann. David Lean I got to know, of course, in London. And David Selznick and Darryl Zanuck, not to mention Jack Warner, and Sam Goldwyn was actually very, very nice to me.
In Botswana in the Kalahari Desert there's a tented camp called Jack's Camp, which is like old Africa meets Ralph Lauren. The Oriental rugs, the old leather chairs - you feel like you've just jumped out of a Ralph Lauren ad.
Just slip out the back, Jack, make a new plan, Stan, you don't need to be coy, Roy, just get yourself free. Hop on the bus, Gus, you don't need to discuss much, just drop off the key, Lee, and get yourself free.
The bartenders are the regular band of Jack, and the heavenly drummer who looks up to the sky with blue eyes, with a beard, is wailing beer-caps of bottles and jamming on the cash register and everything is going to the beat - It's the beat generation, its béat, it's the beat to keep, it's the beat of the heart, it's being beat and down in the world and like oldtime lowdown.
One of the tours we had scheduled - the gaslight tour of Jack the Ripper's haunts, and on Halloween, no less, was canceled at the last minute. I recommend making sure you know the numbers of your tours and destinations so you can confirm your schedule along the way. Also, though we laugh about it now, the Eiffel Tower was on strike so we couldn't go up!
I didn't think there was any way to convince Jack that he wanted more than I had to give, that to people who'd been damaged the way I had been, fear and the will to survive would always be more powerful than attachment. I could only love in a limited way
I think the universe was preparing me to be an actor. I never pursued one thing for long, but I was jack of all trades. I was learning everything possible because I knew my father would never shell out money for dresses or parties, but he would always give me money for new courses and books.
One of the cool things, obviously there's 'Scandal,' 'House of Cards,' there was 'West Wing.' Other than that Jack Lemmon/James Garner movie about ex-presidents, no one's ever done anything in this area, whereas a lot of times, we do a story where someone goes, "Oh, yeah, they did someone sleeping with a Secret Service agent on 'House of Cards.'"
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