I let my drinking do the talking.
It is at least worth arguing that there is a modicum of the creative novelist in all of us, and that this absorption with how men get out of difficulties, single-handedly and alone if possible, is the stuff of which we weave the warp and woof of our own better dramatic imaginings.
(on Katharine Hepburn) She talks at you as though you were a microphone; she lectured the hell out of me on temperance and the evils of drink. She doesn't give a damn how she looks. I don't think she tries to be a character. I think she is one.
I hate funerals. They aren't for the guy who's dead. They're for the guys who are left alive and enjoy mourning.
Capt. Renault: What on Earth brought you to Casablanca? Rick Blaine: My health, I came to Casablanca for the waters. Capt. Renault: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert! Rick Blaine: I was misinformed.
I made more lousy pictures than any actor in history.
The only reason to make a million dollars in this business is to tell some fat producer to go to hell.
There never seems to be any trouble brewing around a bar until a woman puts that high heel over the brass rail. Don't ask me why, but somehow women at bars seem to create trouble among men.
I don't approve of the John Waynes and the Gary Coopers saying "Shucks, I ain't no actor - I'm just a bridge builder or a gas station attendant." If they aren't actors, what the hell are they getting paid for? I have respect for my profession. I worked hard at it.
[On the House Un-American Activities Committee] They'll nail anyone who ever scratched his ass during the National Anthem.
Ugarte: You despise me, don't you? Rick Blaine: If I gave you any thought I probably would.
That's baseball, and it's my game. Y' know, you take your worries to the game, and you leave 'em there. You yell like crazy for your guys. It's good for your lungs, gives you a lift, and nobody calls the cops. Pretty girls, lots of 'em.
You're not a star until they can spell your name in Karachi.
Awards are meaningless for actors, unless they all play the same part.
(On Ingrid Bergman) "I didn't do anything I've never done before, but when the camera moves in on that Bergman face, and she's saying she loves you, it would make anybody feel romantic."
Major Strasser: You give him (Rick Blaine) credit for too much cleverness. My impression was that he's just another blundering American. Captain Renault: We musn't underestimate American blundering. I was with them when they blundered into Berlin in 1918.
Sinatra’s idea of paradise is a place where there are plenty of women and no newspapermen. He doesn’t know it, but he’d be better off if it were the other way around.
An actor needs something to stabilize his personality, something to nail down what he really is, not what he is currently pretending to be.
Acting is experience with something sweet behind it.
I stick my neck out for *nobody*!
(on Warner Brothers) This studio has more suspensions than the Golden Gate Bridge.
This guy (Marlon Brando) - he'll be doing Hamlet when the rest of us are selling potatoes.
The whole world is about three drinks behind.
If a face like Ingrid Bergman's looks at you as though you're adorable, everybody does. You don't have to act very much.
There are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade.
