Anthony Hopkins quotes:

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  • 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 like the good life too much, I'm not good at going on stage night after night and on wet Wednesday afternoons.

  • I do admire Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellen, but I'm a philistine. I like the good life too much; I'm not good at going on stage night after night and on wet Wednesday afternoons.

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

  • It's such a pleasant surprise when you come on set and you find someone in charge like Ken Branagh or James Ivory. You know that you're going to do a day's work and at the end of it, it's going to be good.

  • 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.

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

  • 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 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.

  • People ask, 'Should I call you Sir Hopkins?' But I say, 'No. Call me Tony,' because it's too much of a lift-up.

  • 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 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.

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

  • My father was grounded, a very meat-and-potatoes man. He was a baker.

  • I love roller coasters. I don't get a chance often, but I've gone to Magic Mountain and gone on the rides. I love roller coasters.

  • I'm married. My wife, Stella - a beautiful woman. She's brought a lot of peace to my life, a lot of wisdom.

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

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

  • Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we're atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer.

  • 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've got a great sense of humor.

  • 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.

  • I think a certain amount of stress in life is good. The stress of just working, which takes effort - I think it keeps you going.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • My father wasn't a cruel man. And I loved him. But he was a pretty tough character. His own father was even tougher - one of those Victorians, hard as iron - but my dad was tough enough.

  • In the theatre, people talk. Talk, talk until the cows come home about journeys of discovery and about what Hazlitt thought of a line of Shakespeare. I can't stand it.

  • 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.

  • I hope I would not be so arrogant as to doubt anyone's religion or belief.

  • 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.

  • It was a challenge, to work with Oliver Stone.

  • 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.

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

  • I don't like freeloaders; I don't like people who are negative.

  • 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.

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

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

  • I couldn't say I ever dreamt of becoming a composer, a pianist, or anything else for that matter. I have the kind of brain where nothing is set in stone.

  • I spent two years in the military service, then I trudged around in repertory for quite a while. I somehow wound up at the National Theatre, though, and then I was definitely on my way.

  • I wouldn't use the word 'scared' for my role as Hitchcock, but it was my most insecure. Taking on such a formidable, giant personality such as Hitchcock; he was one of the great geniuses of world cinema. Sheer genius.

  • 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.

  • Richard Burton came from the same town as me, so I thought I'd follow my nose, and follow my luck. I think I've been very lucky.

  • I've always liked American actors particularly. Because that was my first impression. I was very enamoured of America when I was a kid because we were surrounded by American soldiers during the war, the accent was very strange to me, it was very exotic and very captivating.

  • I play music - I write my own music, but I play music, just background music really, and just let it happen.

  • What is so liberating about this whole business is when you see that big movies are going to come out and then you see them up in Malibu in the little triplex theatre a week later and you think, this is show business. This is the great movie career. And it's all funded in the shoe box.

  • I don't have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don't know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don't know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don't think you need all that stuff.

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

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

  • 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'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.

  • 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.

  • And I love a scary movie. It makes your toes curl and it's not you going through it.

  • I'm most suspicious of scripts that have a lot of stage direction at the top of the page... sunrise over the desert and masses of... a whole essay before you get to the dialogue.

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Getting old ain't for the faint of heart.

  • 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.

  • How do you play Hannibal Lector? Well just don't move. Scare people by being still.

  • On his Hannibal Lector mask: I've got it at home. I wear it to bed every night.

  • 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.

  • I love to have a laugh. I like to tease people.

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

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

  • Ryan Gosling. He was a good kid, good actor. I like him very much. What was the name of the movie? I've forgotten it. Fracture.

  • I love life because what more is there?

  • Working with Katherine Hepburn, she said to me, "Don't act." She said, "Read the lines. Just be. Just speak the lines." I said, "Okay." She said, "You look good. You got a good pair of shoulders, you got a good head, good face."

  • The knighthood was a tremendous honour, I don't dismiss it. But I feel embarrassed by the flowery, theatrical stuff that goes with being an actor.

  • I don't know why they gave me a knighthood - though it's very nice of them - but I only ever use the title in the U.S. The Americans insist on it and get offended if I don't.

  • You still wake up sometimes. You wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the lambs.

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

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

  • Keep low expectations and life gets pretty good.

  • I've always liked to be a meat and potatoes kind of actor who doesn't believe in any of the highfalutin stuff about acting, so I tend to be a little bit more cynical.

  • 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.

  • 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 don't believe in nepotism. I don't much like the idea of parents who interfere.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • I'm a pretty tough guy, you know. I'm a pretty hard man. I've got a lot of compassion, but I don't waste time with people.

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

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

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

  • I watched a film with a very famous, great, great actor, I won't mention his name because everyone loves his memory, but I thought, "God he was acting a lot." Great actor, but nonstop acting. Wall to wall, fitted-carpet acting.

  • You have to be pretty tough to be an actor, and you have to be pretty certain what you want. You can't waffle through this business.

  • 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.

  • I'm composing and writing music.

  • I'm devious, cruel, cunning and addictive.

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

  • Years ago I met Richard Burton in Port Talbot, my home town, and afterwards he passed in his car with his wife, and I thought, 'I want to get out and become like him'. Not because of Wales, because I love Wales, but because I was so limited as a child at school and so bereft and lonely, and I thought becoming an actor would do that.

  • 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.

  • I have dual citizenship; it just so happens I live in America. 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.

  • 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 always had a knack for improvisation. I can write down the notes I play, but never really had a proper academic musical background. I suppose I'm blessed and cursed by the fact I have that freedom.

  • 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.

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • If I spent all my time criticising myself, I wouldn't be able to function. There are actors who theorise till the cows come home. I haven't the patience for them. It's maybe shallow, but that's why I'll never be part of the acting set.

  • I have dual citizenship, it just so happens I live in America.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • This industry has been really good to me. It's been a great life. I'm not through yet. I'm ready when you are, Mr. DeMille.

  • I've felt like an outsider all my life. It comes from my mother, who always felt like an outsider in my father's family. She was a powerful woman, and she motivated my father.

  • Once you begin to fall off the track and believe you breathe different air to everyone else, you're doomed; you're finished.

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

  • I like to take it easy.

  • The Welsh people have a talent for acting that one does not find in the English. The English lack heart.

  • I'm not a health freak. I just work out every day.

  • I tend to get bored quickly, which means I must be boring.

  • We're always looking over our shoulders, 'what they will think, what the press will think, what will this one - am I making the right career move?' When you're young you have to do all that to survive, I suppose.

  • 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.

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

  • 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.

  • 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...

  • 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.

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