Ethan Hawke Quotes - Page 2

It is quite rare to find people who are really dedicated to a level of excellence. Most of us are really quite lazy most of the time.

I like [that] there's a certain inherent drama to those jobs that is exciting to tell stories about and it's still real life. I'm a little less interested in the current fad of being obsessed with superheroes and things that are so out of the box.

I thought I was so much smarter than everybody. And I'm not.

If you don't give inspiration an opportunity, it will never arrive.

Whenever a really passionate, talented filmmaker seems to have an interest in me, I take it very seriously because I like to work.

For me, the real goal is to integrate. The thing that I'm most happy with is the fact that I've been able to keep doing all of it - to keep writing, and to keep acting in movies, and to keep acting on the stage, to keep directing plays. I find that they feed each other, and that I learn about acting from directing and I learn about writing from acting.

I meet a lot of young people that want to go into acting because they think of what it will do for them. If that's the case, it can be a very, very painful profession. But if the kids want to do acting because they love it, and they want to give to it, then they can have a great life. It's really about as simple as how you look at it.

Directing is like putting together a collage.

My relationship to reality has been so utterly skewed for so long that I don't even notice it any more. It's just my reality.

My favorite stories are human, so I'm always looking for...

And the best films feel like a fist punching you in the solar plexus and all elements of the filmmaking process - the acting, the design, the cinematography, the music, is all working to one end.

When I woke up I was naked. I have this one oddball idiosyncrasy: Sometimes in my sleep I take off all my clothes.

You can't keep wanting to be 20 years old. Everybody knows that, but what's in the next room?

I did this movie right after it about the life of Chet Baker. It's called Born to Be Blue. In that situation, there's a real clear character you're drawing on. It's a real person. It's really exciting and interesting to do the research to figure out how to make that a nuanced, three-dimensional human being.

Set designers, costume designers, actors, writers, music, that's what is beautiful.

With this sunrise somehow I felt I was exactly where I was supposed to be... Have faith, the light seemed to announce.

In all of our society, but especially in Hollywood, there is an obsession with perfection that can lead to self-loathing and neurosis and all that kind of stuff.

I have a daughter and the thing I wish for her is not love, fame, money or anything like that. It's just one great best friend. You know, if you have somebody that has your back, you're gonna be all right.

A good movie humanizes people.

It just makes sense to remember gratitude and the place that gratitude should have in your life, and that none of us are owed these wonderful experiences, and we should always make the best of them.

We all have this fantasy of finding our one true love who's going to be the perfect fit. It's just not a reality.

I have had so many bad auditions.

I'd be lying if I said I had confidence in every choice I've made, that I have faith in every film I do on every shot.

Well, there's a great Marlon Brando quote that to do something well you have to spiritually marry your director. You have to be making the same movie they are in that you have to try to help their imagination be better, and more full, and more fully realized, but you can't have a different imagination because then you end up - and you see this a lot in movies - where it feels like they were making five different films.

I never thought that I would be labeled something like Generation X because of that movie ( Reality Bites ). I had no idea going into it, and it wasn't a label I could relate to.