Jack Nicholson Quotes - Page 9

I'm in the movie business; it's meant to be very cutthroat. But you won't find anybody that ever says I cheated them or manipulated them.

I have to keep myself in check when I go to the kids' sports events. I sit waaay in the back. I make sure I don't do too much cheering, you know what I mean? I'm still not quite adjusted to this modern school of thought: Oh, it doesn't matter who wins. I'm not all the way there yet, but I accept it from the back row.

The way I reacted to 9/11 was I decided I didn't want to do any movies that are sad or critical. I decided I didn't want to make my living depressing people or making them go home sick, so I just decided I wanted to do comedy for a while and study it for a while. It doesn't mean everybody should do that, but that was my reaction.

There are major influences on us that people are not aware of. There are big lies that nobody's willing to discuss.

There has long been a bemoaning of the lack of opportunity to make films that are anything but explosions or the ladling on the pea soup or whatever you want to call it. You can hardly make a movie today where somebody isn't a murderer or a rapist or, if it's a "Fried Green Tomatoes" that isn't some wistful thing on this, that or the other thing.

That's what I like about the movie business: you're always in contact with wonderful and interesting people.

I come from the Lynchs of Sligo. You know, I went there, but I looked in the phone book and there are nine million Lynches in Sligo.

I don't play golf competitively. I tell everybody that I cheat so they won't gamble with me. That's why you can't watch football. Everybody's gambling. They don't want to watch the game; they watch the spread.

I've always understood money; it's not a big mystical thing to me.

When I was in high school, I earned the pimple award and every other gross-out award.

I'm not hard to get along with.

Everybody said I was good, but being known and not having a big film success is almost tougher than being completely new. It just kind of turned my life around and was definitely a highlight.

I wasn't a babe in the woods. I'd watched a lot of stars, from James Dean to Brando, and I'd seen everybody alive work at MGM. I had a certain old-timer's quality, even though I was young and new, and drew on what I believed before I made it.

I guess this proves there are as many nuts in the Academy as anywhere else.

I would never say, "I'm retired." I believe if I decided to just not work, in six months everybody would just forget whether you were working or not.

I know I can act. There aren't too many other jobs I know how to do

There's a period just before you start a movie when you start thinking, I don't know what in the world I'm going to do. It's free-floating anxiety. In my case, though, this is over by lunch the first day of shooting.

I don't remember if I've been asked seriously to direct a picture. I understand that. I'm very good business for people as an actor and perhaps they'd rather I didn't.

Everybody's old enough for a beer, ain't that right, Mule?

Son, we live in a world that has walls and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You!?

Kids are life's only guaranteed, bona fide upside surprise.

Most of the early part of an actor's career, you do the jobs you get.

I began to think that the finest modern writer was the screen actor. This was in the spirit of the Fifties where a very antiliterary literature was emerging - Kenneth Patchen and others. I kind of believed what Nietzsche said, that nothing not written in your blood is worth reading; it's just more pollution of the airwaves.

When I am cast in a movie where I feel that the woman's part is more interesting, I usually start thinking about Spencer Tracy and Fred Astaire. They seem to be the most clear actors when working with women.

I thought of myself as part of the general filmmaking effort. And as my scope broadened, I began to think about directing. I wanted to be the guy who got to say whether the dress is red or blue.