David duchovny quotes

Just like every show has a tone, every show has different people on it playing different games. I don't say 'game' in a pejorative sense, I just mean, these are different stories that we tell ourselves when we go to work.

For hundreds of years, that was the major form of entertainment: The grown-ups sat around and watched the kids play. Now they sit around and watch the television. The actors are the kids.

I think [kids] enjoy reading, but it's a different world now. There are a lot of competitors for the imaginative attention.

I really like gratuitous nudity. I hate when people go, 'I'll only do it if it makes sense for the movie'. It never makes sense. So I like it - the more gratuitous the better.

A dream is the mind's way of answering a question it hasn't yet figured out how to ask.

One of the scary things is that, when you're a kid, you look at your dad as the man who has no fear. When you're an adult, you realize your father had fear, and that you have it, too.

On the one hand, people think they own kids; they feel that they have the right to tell the kids what to do. On the other hand, people envy kids. We'd like to be kids our whole lives. Kids get to do what they do. They live on their instincts.

Whenever somebody says they need an angle for their story I always fear that they've got an idea and they want me to fit into it or they want me to come up with an idea myself or I'm supposed to be more revealing than I've been, and to me it just sounds like something I don't want to do.

Anxiety is part of creativity, the need to get something out, the need to be rid of something or to get in touch with something within.

Actually, I have an interest in finishing my Ph.D., but I just know I never will.

You're raising a kid and you give it food and shelter and, most importantly, you give it the feeling that it's special. I think people react to celebrities like that - I mean, they treat celebrities like children.

You're kinda striding the line of what's yours and theirs. What's yours, what's mine, what's ours as creators of it and what's yours as owners.

As names that can mean things, I prefer spiritual to a lot of other things.

I think the real heroic teachers are the ones who work with kids, like my mom and my sister do.

Feelings come and go, unless you don't feel them. Then they stay, and hurt, and grow pear-shaped and weird.

Privacy is something I have come to respect. I think when I was younger I wanted to tell everybody everything, because I thought I was so damn interesting. Then I heard the snoring.

I lost my virginity when I was 14. And I haven't been able to find it.

I just spend my money on the essentials. Just basically food and shelter.

I poop in the backyard... I wear disposable diapers.

Without whining and without making myself a tragic figure, there is no replacement for the loss of your privacy. It's a huge sacrifice.

I don't want to know what happens in any movie that I go to see.

If somebody says what they want or what they need it gives the person the chance to say yes or no, instead of suffering in silence or depravation or whatever it is.

Part of being an actor is letting things come about organically as opposed to forcing them.

As we age, there are different things that become important to us and that means that different aspects of our character come to the forefront; certain aspects recede. And that's fun. It would be shitty to have to imitate myself.

People… they don’t write anymore – they blog. Instead of talking, they text, no punctuation, no grammar: LOL this and LMFAO that. You know, it just seems to me it’s just a bunch of stupid people pseudo-communicating with a bunch of other stupid people in a proto-language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the King’s English.

I don't see any difference in the craft of acting, in film or television. It's absolutely the same. It's different storytelling, playing a character over multiple hours, as opposed to two.

I had a fear that I'd be typecast, but I don't really have that fear anymore.

I wouldn't succeed at musical theater.

Garry Shandling is someone I've publicly gone gay for, for jokes. Oh and anyone in the Twilight movies. I don't know any of their names, but all of them. The wolves, the vampires? They're all fantastic.

I'm always trying to perfect the romantic comedy, though.

Dogs are the broccaflower of the animal kingdom.

Willie Mays was the best ever. When I was in college I once made a catch like the one Mays made over his head. Sometimes when I'm lying in bed at night I think about it. It still makes me warm.

If you have Darwin, Christ and Nietzsche, they're all going to talk at once. You need somebody who listens.

I'm not a comic book character. I'm not Indiana Jones or Bond, I'm a flesh and blood guy who is ageing and changing. I don't have to do what I did in '93. I couldn't do it and thank God.

I was about 26 or 27 and it was imperative that I make a living right away and it's hard to make a living on stage, so I started in television and film.

Patrick Stewart was the first internet sex symbol without hair but pileggi always thought it was him.

One of the great things about doing series television is the guest actors that you can have come on and play around with.

If you're smart, you'll always be humble. You can learn all you want, but there'll always be somebody who's never read a book who'll know twice what you know.

Everybody gets the tattoo they deserve.

I'll instinctively know that I identify with a character.

I think Mulder is the worst FBI agent in the world. He spends millions of dollars investigating these paranormal phenomena and never comes up with any evidence. He's the Kenneth Starr of the FBI.

Sex is great until you die, but it's never as great as it was when you were a kid, when it was a mystery.

The only episode which was completely my idea was for Mitch Pileggi, the actor who portrays Skinner, the Assistant Director of the FBI. He appears often in the series, but only for a few scenes. You know virtually nothing about him. I wanted him to have an episode that was his alone, so I wrote Avatar for him. He even has a scene that's pretty . . . hot [knowing smile]. He was very happy.

Chemistry is really about two people who like to act together, I think. It's like tennis in the most cliched way. It's like if you hit the ball, they hit the ball back, and they don't hit it into the stands, and they don't put the ball in their pocket and walk off - and they don't argue with the umpire, you know?

I don't think of myself as a TV actor. I think of myself as a film, television and Off-Off-Off-Off Broadway actor.

I enjoy trying to figure out the best way to compliment the picture and not overpower it.

I don't know how anybody gets better at anything aside from doing it.

I may be learning guitar, but I'll never be able to sing.

I got married a bit late, I agree. In any other period of history I'd have been dead at that age and they'd have assumed I was gay. Like Michelangelo, or Leonardo da Vinci. But I was a late developer. I didn't go through puberty until I was 35.

I'm very proud of my Scottish blood.

I think people still have a need for miracles. Science keeps telling them there's no life on Mars, there's no God, nothing's trailing Hale-Bopp, those people are just dead in their Nikes. But they want to believe in something.

I love Doctor Who and I remember the first one, which was wonderful in its low-tech quality. I also loved the theme song, which sounded like The Cure to me. Which character would I like to play in Doctor Who? Who's the bad guy? The Dalek? OK, I'll play him.

Linda Brewer's example is inspiring, colorful and potentially very funny. Her journey also exists firmly in the Heartland tradition of American success stories and comedies.

Every day I try to do breathing exercises, meditation, and yoga. These things sound awfully cliche, but they help me slow down and try to point to a truth.

I don't think I'd ever be cruel to an animal.

My entire life has been an attempt to get back to the kind of feelings you have on a field. The sense of brotherhood, the esprit de corps, the focus - there being no past or future, just the ball. As trite as it sounds, I was happiest playing ball.

Those characters are forever searchingeven if we're not watching them, they're out there, in some dimension. Mulder and Scully are still doing their thing, because that's their nature.

I don't believe in a conspiracy to hide the existence of extraterrestrial life.

I kind of dread any kind of critical response, just because it's always painful in some way. Even if it's 80 percent good, it's the 20 percent that's bad that you remember - and that's a higher number than I usually get, 80 percent would be amazing.

Our country was founded on a distrust of government. Our founding fathers gave power to the people to keep an eye on government. So when politicians say, 'Trust me,' they're actually being very un-American.

I drive an electric car.

I don't discount belief. I just discount most of the things that people believe in.

I don't make decisions based on money.

Maybe the best things about celebrity are the things like being able to get that seat on the plane that you wouldn't normally get, but that's kind of like cheating.

I love dogs. They live in the moment and don't care about anything except affection and food. They're loyal and happy. Humans are just too damn complicated.

I've run into certain geniuses of individualism - they are very few and far between - who live their lives completely on their own terms; they are very powerful and have a great amount of happiness. We all should aspire to that.

It's almost obscene when you see people who haven't matured, who haven't changed, who don't have the weight of years on them. So that's interesting to me - to think about playing him into the future, anew.

I dont like the idea of being eaten by a shark. I like to swim in the ocean, and I think much more about sharks than anyone should. I really resent the fact that my oceangoing experiences are ruined by Jaws.

It's not someone else's responsibility to honor my marriage. It's my responsibility.

I like my computer. But I don't know how to use it as well as the 10-year-old daughter.

The critical mind is the creative mind.

I'm half Jewish, half Scottish. It's hard for me to buy anything.

People always love and respect characters who speak the truth, even if the truth hurts.

I'm not going to give up. I can't give up. Not as long as the truth is out there.

Games, by nature, have more plot options and non-linear qualities than TV and film.

In this age of media and Internet access, we are much more talkative than ever before.

In the U.S., oddly, we have images of men as arrogant and aggressive.

Usually, when I act, I try to forget the words and let them come, and just find my way through them.

It's always like you write a poem when you can't really say what you're trying to say.

What makes me mad is arrogance, pretension, putting on airs.

My whole life, Ive wanted things before I was ready. I was always pushing for the next job, the next success. I was so focused on achieving and the path that I was missing some great point about life.

I also watch a lot of really bad television when I'm writing, "Like Dancing With the Stars," with my daughter.

I mean, you always want everybody to pat you on the back and tell you you're wonderful every time you do something; I think that's human nature.

The real truth about a lot of life's mysteries can be explained by science but people don't want to get in bed with science because it's cold. They prefer religion, myth, drama.

It seems unlikely that we're alone in the universe. But I'm pretty sure nobody's hiding any contact.

What I liked about Mulder was his quality of not caring what other people thought of him. He was very independent. He wasn't interested in women. I liked that. He had kind of an intellectual quest, but not a sexual quest. That was the challenge of Mulder. Here was a guy that got almost sexually excited about aliens. And I wanted to be able to do that!

It's hard to find scripts that know what they are from page one to page 115.

I feel I have to work hard to nurture whatever talent I have as an actor. I feel like it's not natural to me. So I don't take it for granted... What I think is my natural ability - which is writing - I think I totally take that for granted.

I wouldn't say we were doing that. I think we probably stopped thinking. Though it took a while to stop thinking.

Every time Mulder smiles, people say, 'God, it was great to see you smile. Mulder never smiles.' I say, 'Mulder smiles a whole lot. He smiles at least once a show.' People get these ideas in their heads and they're impossible to shake. But, to be honest with you, Mulder is every bit as vulnerable and quirky as Ally McBeal. I think Mulder has pretty good legs, too.

Larry Grobel's interviews are informative and insightful without being pandering or intrusive. You get the sense at all times of both intelligence at work-the interviewee's and Grobel's-both inspired by the encounter.

Action is pretty boring to do as an actor. Action and sex scenes are silly because it's all faking.

I don't need my phone to play me music. I need it to be a phone and an e-mail thing.

I enjoy comedy and I hope that people enjoy watching me do it.

Humility is considered an un-masculine quality.

At Princeton I wrote my junior paper on Virginia Woolf, and for my senior thesis I wrote on Samuel Beckett. I wrote some about "Between the Acts" and "Mrs. Dalloway'' but mostly about "To the Lighthouse." With Beckett I focused, perversely, on his novels, "Molloy," "Malone Dies," and "The Unnamable." That's when I decided I should never write again.

In high school and college, I was an athlete.

It's rare in movies or even in life where somebody owns up to their needs. I guess in a relationship it's the only way it has a chance to survive it.

Maybe with "Californication" the character was partly based on Rick Moody. I read him and Jay McInerney, the templates for this bad boy novelist.

I've turned down jobs because I've said, 'Honestly, I can't find my way in. I can't do it. I love you, as a director. I think the script is good. You deserve better than I think I can do.'

Obviously people's feelings are going to get hurt when you use certain words, but you can't outlaw words. They're really the history of our culture. They tell you what's going on. When you make words politically incorrect you're taking all the poetry out of the language. I'm pro anybody living their lives the way they want to live, sexually and otherwise; and I'm anti any kind of language repression.

I don't know if [Samuel] Beckett is something you ever bring to the beach - get out of the water, towel off, and start reading some of "The Unnamable." Although, because it's the kind of book you can open to any page and start reading, it is beach reading in that way.

I'm not reading currently because I'm getting revisions of a novel. If I read while I'm writing I will unconsciously plagiarize and go to jail.

There is never a personal-life connection between my characters and myself. I'm a professional and I can access what I need to access, so there's no bleed-over. I didn't need to believe in aliens to play Mulder. As for my personal life, everything is fantastic right now.

The key is to get to know people and trust them to be who they are. Instead, we trust people to be who we want them to be - and when they're not, we cry.

I don't like watching people work if they're making art.

I will read biographies or autobiographies while I'm writing, but mostly I put books in a to-read queue, like Rachel Cusk's new novel, "Outline."

The happiest moment of my life was probably when my daughter was born.

Fame does lead to money, which I don't have a close relationship with. I'm the kind of guy who never sees the money - it all goes somewhere else. I don't understand it, I don't like to deal with it. I have a fear of not having it, because I grew up without it.

I don't mind close-ups, I like them, but they're kind of forceful - you see a lot, you get a lot of information in a close-up. There's less mystery.

I don't know about the baby, but I will be interested to see, like anyone who's a fan of the show [how it's resolved]," he said, and then joked, "They'll have to resolve me while I'm not there, so I hope they don't say, 'Oh yeah, Mulder's gone, what an asshole. He had a baby with me, he kissed me and then he left.'

People think celebrities don't have to worry about human things like sickness and death and rent. It's like you've traveled to this Land of Celebrity, this other country. They want you to tell about what you saw.

I'm inspired as a writer by any place where I've lived for a significant amount of time that have memories, my past, and stories attached to them, and that's really New York and L.A. Any place where there's ghosts are inspiring.

I always dreamt of being a basketball player. A dream that only I believed in.

You can go through life and actually speak your mind and do it in an articulate fashion and with a really intelligent point of view.

Approaching a part or thinking about taking a part, I never think, 'Is that person like me?'

If my work was good enough, I would never have to do publicity.

Sometimes when I'm swimming, I think that maybe someday I'll put my red Speedo up for auction. Or maybe I'll donate it to the Smithsonian. They can stuff it with two plums and a gherkin and put it on display.

My favorite parts of work as an actor and a director are those unplanned mistakes that do happen, because it's like catching lightning in a bottle. It's the best part of what we do.

People are really much more respectful than they're made out to be and much more discerning about the fact that I'm not the character I play.

There's two things I gotta do. One is, I gotta update my resume. And then, I have to call my mother.

I've got huge tubs full of X-Files memorobilia that I can sell on eBay.

In the general sense, there's a journey to be had. You either start at the top or the bottom for a journey to happen. Our movie has to start at the top and work it's way down. Or start at the bottom and work it's way up.

I understand the self-loathing and the resentment, and the discipline that it takes to sit down in front of a typewriter or computer every single day, whether it's going well or not going well.

Most journalists expect me to answer all their questions about aliens and spaceships.