Anthony hopkins quotes

I don't want to be anything else other than what I am. I can say that with passion. No regrets.

You're not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you, Agent Starling?

I'm interested in the dream and subconscious mind, the peculiar dream-like quality of our lives, sometime nightmare quality of our lives.

I believe I am quite amiable and affable and quite fair, and I've rarely worked with people who are the opposite. Moodiness scares me. What gets to me is unkindness. Madness. Unwarranted cruelty through words. People who scream and shout at work. I hate confrontation and violence. I've done it in the past and I don't want to do it again. I guess I want a perfect world.

I play piano and that's my love. I read and I paint and I compose music, so I've got a pretty full creative life. And it's not because, I'm obsessively creative.

I am a bit of a solitude person - a solitary personality. I like being on my own. I don't have any major friendships or relationships with people.

No expectations. Ask nothing, expect nothing and accept everything, and life is very well.

I worked with Steven Spielberg on Amistad... he seemed so very secure in himself that he let me do things.

I just learn my lines, go on set. Do my preparation, whatever that is. Have a cup of coffee. Say hello to everyone. And be friendly. "Action" - and then do it.

Life's too short to deal with other people's insecurities.

People forget that Mozart wrote for commissions. There's a thing in psychology where they think if it's popular, it can't be serious.

I know that some actors and directors like to have intensity on set. I don't, particularly. Certainly, if they want that, that's fine, but I can't work like that.

If you don't go when you want to go, when you do go, you'll find you've gone.

Living with reality is a very good trick, it gives you tremendous freedom and it changes the structure of the molecules of your soul by living with reality because you don't expect anything anymore. Which is a weird paradox.

We have a Boesendorfer piano that I play every day. It keeps my brain and my fingers active.

Danger is the spice of life and you’ve got to take a risk now and then…that’s what makes life worthwhile.

I used to be a bit obsessed by acting but not anymore. I do enjoy acting but I probably enjoy it more now because it's easier. I can't work in the theater because to me it's too serious. It's like being in prison for me. I admire people that can do that but I can't do it. I'd rather live my life and do a bit of acting in between.

I never cling on to hope or certainty. They're the enemies of peace.

We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It's a death trap.

What a glorious night. Every face I see is a memory. It may not be a perfectly perfect memory. Sometimes we had our ups and downs. But we're all together and you're mine for a night. And I'm going to break precedent and tell you my one-candle wish...that you would have a life as lucky as mine, where you can wake up one morning and say, 'I don't want anything more'. Sixty-five years. Don't they go by in a blink?

If you do things, whether it's acting or music or painting, do it without fear - that's my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there's nothing to lose.

I think Julianne Moore is very, very good. I've worked with her. We did Surviving Picasso. I remember one scene we did together. She had to have a nervous, a mental, breakdown in this one scene. I didn't have many lines. I just had to make sure I knew I came in on cue all right. And I was just watching her walking though the rehearsal. I thought I know what she's doing, "This is going to be terrific." So they said, "Are you ready" and she said, "Yeah," "Ok, roll the camera." And all in one take.

Relish everything that's inside of you, the imperfections, the darkness, the richness and light and everything. And that makes for a full life.

I love to read, and so I've been reading everything I can, not intensely, but I love to read so I read "Origin of Species" by Darwin and I can't make head or tail of E=MC squared by Einstein, but I try to baffle my way through that.

When you're young, you're very insecure. And if I could learn, if I could revisit my own past I could say to myself, don't think too much, just get on and do it.

If you don't follow through on your dreams, you might as well be a vegetable.

By giving up 'the need' and 'the want', things begin to happen for you

My life turned out to be beyond my greatest dreams.

I'm more and more convinced that life is a dream. What has happened to me is surely a dream.

Non-expectation and acceptance. Because expectation leads to resentment and depression, so I have no expectations.

The way to make better decisions is to make more of them. Then make sure you learn from each one, including those that don't seem to work out in the short term: they will provide valuable distinctions to make better evaluations and therefore decisions in the future. Realize that decision making, like any skill you focus on improving, gets better the more often you do it.

There's a thing that if you - somebody in faith is always troubled by doubt, and somebody by doubt is always wanted by faith. So it's a kind of paradox.

I have a punishing workout regimen. Every day I do 3 minutes on a treadmill, then I lie down, drink a glass of vodka and smoke a cigarette.

I think doubt is a very healthy way to live.

The whole point of courage, to overcome your fear. That's the interesting thing, when courage bleeds through the fear.

I read a lot, that's my main hobby. I've got an iPad which I store books on and I read voraciously. I'm a slow reader but I'm obsessive. I make references, underline things, cross-reference. I'm an autodidact.

I am not very good with relationships. With anyone. I can't be locked up with anyone for too long.

I'm very much a loner. I don't like long relationships with people and I always keep people at a distance.

I think the first British actor who really worked well in cinema was Albert Finney. He was a back-street Marlon Brando. He brought a great wittiness and power to the screen. The best actor we've had.

The magical, supernatural force that is with us every second is time. We can't even comprehend it. It's such an illusion, it's such a strange thing.

Try not to be concerned with it. It's a spiritual thing. Don't look for the results, don't live in the payoff. Live in the moment which is a spiritual principle. Live in the moment and let the results take care of themselves. It's in the hands of God. The rest is all ego. And I have learned, over the years, it's got nothing to do with me. As my life is none of my business.

I love life because what more is there?

Acting is just a process of relaxation, actually. Knowing the text so well and trusting that the instinct and the subconscious mind, whatever you want to call it, is going to take over.

I am young! Being creative and keeping your brain occupied is very sensible because if you don't you die, slowly.

I'll do anything to keep everyone laughing. Things get too intense on film sets. I remember on The Elephant Man, I used to imitate a cat without moving my lips. David Lynch would say, "Cut! Sorry, we've got a noise somewhere on set." Everyone would be looking around for this cat.

When I was a young guy, I knew everything. Now I know very little. I know less and less as the time goes on.

I don't push my luck. I don't worry about the results and therefore everything seems to work out well. That's something I've learnt over the years. The whole thing about the acting business is that it's a hit-or-miss game so I keep my distance from it.

The trick is not to get too fanatical about getting the accent too accurate because then that becomes a mask. What I try to do is just painting and sketching some of the sounds without obliterating my own voice.

Guilt is the thief of life.

I come from - I came from Wales, and it's a strong, butch society. We were in the war and all that. People didn't waste time feeling sorry for themselves. You had to get on with it. So my credo is get on with it. I don't waste time being soft. I'm not cold, but I don't like being, wasting my time with - life's too short.

I do my job, and I do what I’m paid to do and I’m always prepared. I prepare by learning the text so well that when I show up, I’m relaxed and the performance sort of happens. Now whether that’s good or bad, I don’t know... Whatever I say is going to sound very egocentric and self centered anyway so I’d better shut up.

Sometimes I feel tired and think I ought to give it up, I don't want to just retire. No, I enjoy it all and you just keep going until the day comes when you can't do it anymore. And that's what I want to do.

That's what happens if you don't address the darkness in you. You become repressed and depressed and suicidal.

I tried acting, liked it, and stuck with it. I saw it as the way I would keep that promise to myself of getting back at those who had made my school life a misery.

Whether it's overeating or it's overworking or over-sex or whatever it is, alcoholism, drug addition, we push ourselves to the brink and then pull back because it's kind of exciting.

You have to have humor. If you don't have humor and you take yourself seriously, you're dead in the water. You have to be jostled. I love it. You've gotta have a laugh. It's better than working for a living.

Israel means war and destruction and we Americans are behind this war and I am ashamed of being American.

I've been composing music all my life and if I'd been clever enough at school I would like to have gone to music college.

I've had no ­contact with my daughter for years. That's her choice. Anyway, you move on. If people don't want to bother with me, fine. You know, God bless them, and move on.

People don't always tell you what they are thinking. They just see to it that you don't advance in life.

I was called 'Dumbo,' like the elephant, as a child because I couldn't understand things at school.

I've got a great sense of humor.

As a Welshman that can't sing, I never feel more proud to be Welsh than when I hear the Treorchy Male Choir - the Master Choir of them all. If I could sing I would apply for membership myself.

I was lousy in school. Real screwed-up. A moron. I was antisocial and didn't bother with the other kids. A really bad student. I didn't have any brains. I didn't know what I was doing there. That's why I became an actor.

If you’re an alcoholic or a drug addict, we flirt with death. We pull ourselves to the brink of destruction and if we’re lucky we pull ourselves back. We all have that in us.

Why love, if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore: only the life I have lived... The pain now is part of the happiness then.

I have no interest in Shakespeare and all that British nonsense... I just wanted to get famous and all the rest is hogwash.

My weak spot is laziness. Oh, I have a lot of weak spots: cookies, croissants.

My weak spot is laziness. I have a lot of weak spots - cookies, croissants; my wife is always lecturing me about this, I tend to put it all down as habit or it's just acting.

I think one of the things you have to have is a respect for the camera, a real respect, and a real love for it, and to really, when I say take it seriously, quote 'seriously', I mean not patronize it. It's a big mistake to patronize it and think it's a third rate medium, because it's not, it's a great art form.

Acting is constricted because you have the lines. But I improvise with it and what I learn on the set. I improvise rhythms and just changes.

A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

Acting is a creative process, and directing and music. I think creative people - and I take myself as a creative person and it doesn't mean you have to be an actor, a musician, or a painter - but I think if you are in a creative profession or a creative business you do have a heightened awareness.

I visualized a lot of things happening to me, because I was a lonely kid because I didn't understand anything about school.

I am able to play monsters well. I understand monsters. I understand madmen.

Multiply it by infinity and take it to the depths of forever, and you will still have barely a glimpse of what I'm talking about.

I’m not young anymore. I don’t wanna start over again.

I've always been hopeless at everything when I was a kid. That's why I became an actor - 'cause I couldn't do anything else.

I think all those actors from that generation, like Bogart - they were wonderful actors. They didn't act. They just came on and they did it, and the characters were wonderful.

Actors I admire? Ed Harris, or course, I think he's terrific; because I know he always had to fight being what he looked like a lot, but I think he's a terrific actor.

I always liked to take the plunge, you know, I'd jump in at the deep end and hope that I'd find land somehow, or hope I'd float or survive. That's more or less the way I've gone through my life.

I would like to go back to Wales. I'm obsessed with my childhood and at least three times a week dream I am back there.

My philosophy is: It's none of my business what people say of me and think of me.

I know how to be strong. I know how to be ruthless. It's part of my nature. I wouldn't be an actor if I wasn't.

Certainty is the enemy of mankind. If you're certain about everything, you have the Inquisition, you have Nazis and you have - that certainty is something to be guarded about.

Beware the tyranny of the weak. They just suck you dry.

When you're younger you have so many ideas about yourself; everything is important. It's not when you look back, nothing is that important. It's only life.

I don't have any expectations about my films. If they're good, they're good - if they're not, they're not. About 10 years ago, I remember going to see one of my movies - I can't even remember which one now - and everyone was jumping up and down, getting excited, saying what a great film it was going to be. We all went in and watched it, and it was the slowest movie I've ever seen. The next day, the reviews were terrible and half the studio was fired.

My life has been a kind of mystery to me. By all my logical, linear thinking I started out in school as a little boy, I didn't have a clue about anything. What they were talking about in school, couldn't play sports, couldn't learn, and I was bottom of the class.

The art of acting is not to act. Once you show them more, what you show them, in fact is bad acting.

I just wanted to be a composer; I became an actor by default, really. I got a scholarship to a college of music and drama, hoping to take a scholarship in music. But I ended up as an acting student, so I've stuck with that for the last 50-odd years.

I think the healthy way to live is to make friends with the beast inside oneself, and that means not the beast but the shadow. The dark side of one's nature. Have fun with it and you know, is to accept everything about ourselves.

I was bullied as a boy - lots of kids are, but hopefully most of us get on with our lives and grow up.

We all dream. We dream vividly, depending on our nature. Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we're atheist.

I'm fascinated by the fact that we can't grasp anything about time.

I'd like to wake up and look like Brad Pitt in the morning, but I don't. I look in the mirror, and I see me.

We are fascinated by the darkness in ourselves, we are fascinated by the shadow, we are fascinated by the bogeyman.

Keep low expectations and life gets pretty good.

I was trundling around with my inadequacies, and inner pain and loneliness. I yearned, desperately, to be something. I yearned to get out from where I was ... some deep discontent within myself, actually some deep dislike of myself.

When you begin to believe you have license because you are a special person breathing special oxygen, that's when you're in big trouble. That's the road to insanity. And a lot of people in the studios are like that. They believe that they are special. I do think actors are blessed, or cursed, with maybe a slightly heightened awareness, which you have to use.

It's very difficult to liberate yourself from what you've learned. You know it's almost impossible because you learn in order to survive.

I wanted revenge; I wanted to dance on the graves of a few people who made me unhappy. It's a pretty infantile way to go through life - I'll show them - but I've done it, and I've got more than I ever dreamed of.

For me, time is the greatest mystery of all. The fact is that we're dreaming all the time. That's what really gets me. We have a fathomless lake of unconsciousness just beneath our skulls.

We're all caught up in circumstances, and we're all good and evil. When you're really hungry, for instance, you'll do anything to survive. I think the most evil thing - well, maybe that's too strong - but certainly a very evil thing is judgment, the sin of ignorance.

The reward is in the doing of it.

I worked with Lawrence Olivier some years ago. He was a great mentor.

We're just blades of grass, and when we go, we go, we never come back; one life . . . maybe that's true. But I tend to believe that this is not all there is. Because my life has been like a shadow of something deeper. And I've experienced that many times.

I've got no need to prove to myself that I can do Shakespeare. I've done it.

I've reached a happy stage in my life - you can call it "happy" - but I have no expectations anymore. I'm glad I'm not young anymore.

I'm one of the slowest drivers on the road. I mosey along. If you're doing anything too fast, including living life too fast, that creates sudden death. If I have to be somewhere on time, I make sure I leave early enough.

My philosophy is: It's none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am, and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier.

Women never really care to face the truth when their hearts are involved.

I have no education, I have no academic background in painting or in music, but I write music and I compose music and I write and I sell paintings, and my rule is, well, they can't arrest me.

Mortality is the great rescuer, it finally takes you out of everything, and that makes life good.Read Carl Jung. It makes life richer because this is it; none of us know where we go and this is the fun of it.

The movie industry is full of crazy people who think that they are god.

If you have high expectations you're going to get resentments and all kinds of tension.

Once you accept the fact that there's nothing to fear, you drill into the primal oil well. I believe when we do things without fear, we can do anything. As long as you don't worry about the consequences.

Most of my last 30 years have been like that. Results and manifestations of things I'd dreamed of as a young kid and wanted as a child and as a young man. I realized it maybe 30 years ago. I thought, "This is unreal. This has happened as I expected it to, as I'd pictured it." My whole life has been like that and I'm fascinated by that power that we all have. That we create our lives as we go.

I don't have many friends; I'm very much a loner. As a child I was very isolated and I've never been really close to anyone.

I don't know what acting is, but I enjoy it. I think we ask too many questions of ourselves. We make too much importance of stuff. But I do say to actors when I have taught in classes, or when I sometimes do a talk to a group. I'll say, “If I never acted again, the world wouldn't stop, nor would it stop if I didn't stop acting. That's how important it is. I know it [seems] important when you're young. But I say, “Lighten up. Don't take it all so seriously.” All the gurus and teachers will take your money and run.

You look closely enough, you'll find that everything has a weak spot where it can break, sooner or later.

I was hell bent on destruction... it was like being possessed by a demon.

I remember coming to New York, in 1974 to do a play here called Equis. And I remember the first morning getting up and walking around the streets and I thought, "I'm home." I felt really at peace here.

I don't like mushiness. I'm a very emotional person but I hate sentimentality. I don't like great demonstrations of emotion. But as I'm getting older, I'm getting much more open about all that.

There are people who are convinced supernatural forces are at work, but I've no idea. I suspect 'possession' might be a psychological thing, like schizophrenia. We all think we know things, but we don't know a damn thing. Whether God exists, why we're here... Nobody really knows any of it.