Viggo Mortensen Quotes

There's no excuse to be bored. Sad, yes. Angry, yes. Depressed, yes. Crazy, yes. But there's no excuse for boredom, ever.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from a horse master. He told me to go slow to go fast. I think that applies to everything in life. We live as though there aren't enough hours in the day but if we do each thing calmly and carefully we will get it done quicker and with much less stress.

To be an artist, you don't have to compose music or paint or be in the movies or write books. It's just a way of living. It has to do with paying attention, remembering, filtering what you see and answering back, participating in life.

You should always do the things in life that are both interesting and make you afraid.

Life is short and the older you get, the more you feel it. Indeed, the shorter it is. People lose their capacity to walk, run, travel, think, and experience life. I realise how important it is to use the time I have.

As you get older, you get stuck in your ways; just as you become stiffer physically, you also become stiffer mentally and more narrow-minded unless you make a conscious effort to keep yourself flexible.

I think that every person has many, many people inside of them. We change our personality depending on who we are talking to or what situation we are in.

When you're under stress as a human being, you behave oddly and your relationships with people become strained.

You know, real life doesn't just suddenly resolve itself. You have to keep working at it.

It's hard not to get depressed when you pay attention to the world and how strangely and corrupt the people in it sometimes behave.

I have never been in a natural place and felt that it was a waste of time. I never have. And it's a relief. If I'm walking around a desert or whatever, every second is worthwhile.

You have a moral obligation to finish the job you said you would do.

If you're not optimistic on some level, then you've given up.

You don't have to make something that people call art. Living is an artistic activity, there is an art to getting through the day.

You know, real life doesn't just suddenly resolve itself. You have to keep working at it. Democracy, marriage, friendship. You can't just say she's my best friend. That's not a given, it's a process.

Be kind. It's worthwhile to make an effort to learn about other people and figure out what you might have in common with them.

I think every family is dysfunctional, and some manage to control it better than others.

People like to pigeonhole you. It's easier.

The money I earn from films means I can help the people I want to help - you can do a lot of good if you want to.

I have friends who I get along with who I know get very uncomfortable being alone, unless they're with people, talking all the time. Whether it's on the phone, or in person, they're never by themselves. Whereas I could be alone for months.

I try to research or make up for myself what happened in any character's life. From when he was born until the first page of the script. I fill in the blanks.

One of the main ways that leadership stays in power is by, in various ways, convincing people that they should just let those who are in government govern: 'Trust us. Trust me. Just let us take care of things. Stay out of it.' Your opinions don't really matter. You are isolated. You are insignificant.

My job as an artist, as I see it, is to understand and in some cases to take on various ways of thinking about people and the world that are different from my own, sometimes radically different.

You do need to get lucky, no matter how talented you are.

As Martin Luther King said, "Passively to participate in an unjust system is to accept that system and to participate in its evil."