Sean Penn Quotes - Page 4

Well, it was interesting because when I was going to do it the first time in my head was Leonardo DiCaprio [for Chris] and Marlon Brando was going to play the character that Hal Holbrook eventually played. But then when it wasn't to be and there was no promise that it ever would be I think some part of me didn't want to attach specifics to it anymore - actors or anything else - because I wanted to see it made that much more badly.

On any movie I'm involved with, I say what I think.

I had a house burn down once, and everything in life burned except my family, and it was so liberating. I didn't have a bad moment about it. It sort of reinvigorated my interest in a lot of things. I wonder if there should be some kind of anarchy.

When I go to bed at night and I think of humanity at large, I think of all those things.

When you get divorced, all the truths that come out, you sit there and go, 'What the f**k was I doing? What was I doing believing that this person was invested in this way?' Which is a fantastically strong humiliation in the best sense. It can make somebody very bitter and very hard and closed off, but I find it does the opposite to me.

As a foreign worker in Haiti, speaking for myself, speaking for the workers, our organization is about 95 percent Haitian, but even foreign workers driving through, we have had very minimal security issues.

I'm not a breakfast eater.

Bukowski said, "I know I'm good, so I like that people think I'm bad, because it gives me a dimension, effortlessly."

Reputations are maintained by the outside world, and they're created by it, too, by and large. And they serve as a hell of a device for privacy, because the more people look for something that's not there, the less chance they have of violating who you are. It's like going out there with a mask on, without having to exercise your upper body to put it on.

I don't want to lie, play games, hurt somebody, or get hurt. You can only go forward in one direction.

I don't see myself as a different guy than I was ten years ago. I don't have aspirations to be. It's really about where you're putting your energies. That's changing a lot.

The greatest fear in my life was getting happy. I'm not so afraid of that anymore.

I'll tell you what I probably would prefer to happen less and less: actors that I know and respect in shampoo ads. Or modeling.

I'm a huge Woody Allen fan. Good movie, bad movie, it doesn't matter - I just like his movies.

I think that people like the Howard Sterns, the Bill O'Reillys and to a lesser degree the bin Ladens of the world are making a horrible contribution.

I think that I've still not been successful at playing the role of the retired actor, and I'd like to work on that.

Yeah, I had actually tried to stop acting before I made Dead Man Walking.

I don't think you can get away with putting your talents in a toilet bowl and not having them flushed away. Forever. There is a level of murder of one's soul and of the culture that they're supposed to be feeding vitamins to.

Love is a mess, at best, and I figure it can be very real in spite of all the things people try to attach to it.

Fulfilling what you start is why you start something.

Well, look at all of these summer blockbusters. You can't help but laugh a little, because you've already seen a lot of these movies 482 times.

If you're willing to put two thoughts into a picture then you're already ahead of the game.

I lost a friend I was blessed to have. My thoughts are with the family of President Chavez and the people of Venezuela.

I have a regret that the entire discussion [with El Chapo]... ignores its purpose, which was to try to contribute to this discussion about the policy in the War on Drugs.

It's a foreground of my feeling. That place moves me. And I don't mean my country; it's part of our shared natural world that happens to be particular to a sense of wherever my storytelling inclinations come from and my own history of kind of being a road rat and travelling.