John Hawkes quotes:

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  • I'd said to my sweetheart a couple of days before that the SAG and Spirit Award nomination was amazing and I had no attachment to the Academy Award. I knew I was an underdog so I just decided to sleep through the announcement.

  • I went to a performance of 'The Crucible' at the Guthrie when I was a sophomore in high school, and I knew right away that that's what I wanted to do.

  • Starting in the mid-'80s, I played in a band called Meat Joy, and we made our own record, toured.

  • It's much more interesting to watch someone who is ill-equipped to solve their problem fight to solve their problem than wallow in the knowledge that they're ill-equipped to solve their problems.

  • I do all kinds of roles - nerd, psycho, nerd, psycho, nerd, psycho - and occasionally someone kind of normal. It's weird, when I lived in Austin I was always cast as pretty normal people. But when I moved to Los Angeles I was immediately branded a psycho.

  • There's a lot of skeletons in my closet!

  • Being a kid, as all kids do, you feel out of place or like kind of a freak. You wake up feeling like your head got put onto someone else's body that day.

  • I've never had any delusions about being a leading man, and it's not sour grapes to say that in the best films that I've always enjoyed, the cliched leading man type isn't a part of the picture.

  • For the last 20 years of my life, I've had the mantra to do amazing parts with amazing people in amazing projects, so I'm attracted to good story, writing and character and good people. That's what I'm always searching for and I don't think that's ever going to change.

  • If you're telling a story it's always best not to play the ending.

  • A lot of times, you just don't get the jobs you want to get.

  • My fear now is of cliche, of complacency, of not being able to feel authenticity in myself and those around me.

  • I generally play strong people and scary people.

  • I met Robert Rodriguez working on a movie called 'Roadracers.'

  • As an actor you have to have a strong vivid imagination as you're working and when the camera's rolling, but there's certainly a part of you that is aware of real life, that you're making a movie.

  • I don't think there are in life, pure darkness or pure light. Everyone's got a little of everything.

  • I don't have any training as an actor, but I guess I'm an intense pretender. When you read something over and over, it gets into you a little bit. You can't help but begin to feel it, even if you're a healthy person as I think I am.

  • I think that no matter how dark a person is, the more you learn about them, the more you understand about their life, the more you can sympathize with them or even root for them.

  • I think we've all been misled, at moments in our lives, certainly in school situations, and things like that, with getting with the wrong group briefly, or falling in with someone who we learn the truth about and no longer want to really be with.

  • I don't have actor training myself.

  • Certainly I've had the experience of thinking a person was one thing, and finding out they were another.

  • It's hard to get concert tickets.

  • People have said unkind things and you kind of have to, if you happen to read it, you have to just, you know, move on.

  • I maintain that if you're a novelist and you go into an art museum, you'll come out a better novelist. And if you paint a picture for an hour you're a better actor at the end of it.

  • Fiction is an act of revenge

  • When something gets attention so quickly, people sometimes will look for reasons to find fault and tear it down.

  • I have to be careful of what TV shows I choose, particularly ones that have commercials in them, because it's going to be a different kind of television show.

  • It's tough being an actor making music, because even I have a knee-jerk reaction to that.

  • I don't have any training as an actor, but I guess I'm an intense pretender. When you read something over and over, it gets into you a little bit. You can't help but begin to feel it, even if you're a healthy person as I think I am

  • I don't mean to be highfalutin about it, but I try to limit my visibility.

  • I'm just looking for the best story being told by the best people and the best part that I can find. If those things add up, I want to be a part of it whether it's a studio film or, more likely in that instance, an independent film.

  • Even the small amount of infamy I have makes me uncomfortable - on a personal level and on a professional level.

  • It seems like every year Hollywood makes an attempt to retell the Manson story, and I just couldn't be less interested in it. It's not really our crowning achievement as a civilisation. I'm not saying it shouldn't be done, but it just bores me.

  • You don't really ever think you're that crazy person you're playing.

  • It's probably odd for someone to read an interview where the interviewee is worried about exposure while they're talking in an interview.

  • I guess you can say that every actor is a 'character actor' on some level. But I think some actors have a wider range. I think that's how you get that mantle.

  • I began to write fiction on the assumption that the true enemies of the novel were plot, character, setting and theme, and having once abandoned these familiar ways of thinking about fiction, totality of vision or structure was really all that remained.

  • 'The New York Times' thing... I think any actor would be thrilled to be profiled in that paper.

  • The writer should always serve as his own angleworm "?and the sharper the barb with which he fishes himself out of blackness, the better.

  • I do not feel an exile from America in any sense.

  • Motive is never easy. Sometimes it occurs to one only later.

  • I do all kinds of roles - nerd, psycho, nerd, psycho, nerd, psycho - and occasionally someone kind of normal. It's weird, when I lived in Austin I was always cast as pretty normal people. But when I moved to Los Angeles I was immediately branded a psycho

  • You never really forget who you are. If you did, you'd need to seek some professional help

  • It's hard to tell whether the ship or airplane - they're all the same, I'm convinced - is male or female; it may shift back and forth.

  • When we lived in Juneau, Alaska, it was a town of about 7,000 people, and totally isolated; the only way to get to it was by ship.

  • Really, I didn't like Alaska. It rained, almost every day, at least 300 days out of the year.

  • Part of the way that I work is to observe.

  • It's nice to sometimes get things out of life, rather than stealing from other artists. I'm trying to steal from the real people.

  • As an actor, I think a mistake that any storyteller can make is to play the ending.

  • For me and for I'm sure any actor, each role is a different challenge to prepare for in a different way.

  • I lived in Texas for 10 years.

  • I want people to believe me when I play a part and they are less apt to if they know a lot about me and have associations about me.

  • I think we're all mysteries to ourselves.

  • The only thing that exists is torment, lyricism, and the magnificence of language.

  • I had to go to Sunday school once or twice in my life, and that's where I commented someplace on hearing.

  • I went to a performance of 'The Crucible' at the Guthrie when I was a sophomore in high school, and I knew right away that that's what I wanted to do

  • To be anywhere near an enormous ocean liner when you are just like a fish in the water is frightening.

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