Nick Nolte quotes:

Now, there is always a tremendous fear of science and progressing forward into areas of the unknown and it is a valid fear. Some of the genetic alterations of food are a little edgy.

After Civil Rights, it was very awkward for whites and blacks. We didn't know how to talk to each other.

If you're older you want to tell stories about the pool of human life and living and to communicate, not only to your age group but to do an age group that can begin to understand, that has enough experience of life far beyond the taste of life.

You're playing a role, but you're still feeling it. You can walk away from it after 'Cut,' but if you're playing a sad or mixed-up person, it's hard to stay in that place for these longish period of times. You kind of have to check out.

I'd like to do one European film a year.

We're very reluctant to change, even though we know that all things change, and especially our relationships are just determined to change.

World War II affected the male population in a very detrimental way. They were happy to be home, happy to be alive, happy they won, but they could not express to anybody the horror they had been through.

You do come to a point where you can get your life in control a bit.

Actors are really working with bodies, with their minds, and with their emotions. Feelings, basically. That's what movies are about, going from one feeling to another.

Living in a small town, one of the keys to survival was your imagination.

Asking for forgiveness is just one of the most painful kind of experiences.

Women are just more oriented toward feelings - and I don't mean that in a negative way. But with a male actor and a male director, the emotional exploration can only go so far. With a female director, you can end up exploring so many more depths.

Electing a black president was probably the only coup America could pull off.

Obviously I had gone all through high school and into college, and you don't do that not knowing how to read.

We're social animals. We've got to get along together. It's in our nature. We're hardwired that way.

I accept the dying process. I would just like to be as healthy as I possibly can at each step and phase along the way.

It's fun to change your body and find new things that your body does because of the weight.

You don't learn anything from success. You know, it's comfortable, it's nice, it's warm, but success just leaves you kind of feeling a little bloated.

Everyone chases a bit of what they say life is about: money, desire... But when you stop chasing, you realise life is a rhythm and it's very peaceful, very quiet. You see, it's quite a miracle.

How do I relax? Meditate, I guess. I quit golf. You twist your back and get all cranked up.

You don't want to make awards the reason you're doing things.

I have a lot of scars, man. My mother said that a man is not a man unless he has a scar on his face. And what she meant by a scar was some kind of battle that you had to go through, whether it was psychological or physical. To her, a scar was actually beautiful and not something that marred you.

The difference between a murderer and myself is only that I choose not to do it. But I'm capable.

Americans aren't good at accents, but the English are because their accents change. You go five or six blocks and the accent is different, so they are used to hearing different pitches. In America, you gotta travel maybe 10 states before you can really hear a difference.

About the only thing that'll stay with you that you can trust all your life is your breath. Your breath will be there at the very last, because when it stops, you will stop.

It's failure, really, that you grow by, although nobody likes to experience it.

Success comes to you with luck and a lot of hard work, but it doesn't give you the right to be any better than anybody else.

If I'm not a successful human being, who I am?

I never caught on to being a bully.

If you had a cancer on your skin and had it burned it off, you'd wash it and clean it every day.

Action films have a certain illogicalness to them. They're what we call, when we're working, 'exaggerated realism.'

I've been in movies where the movie doesn't come together but the role comes together, or the movie comes together but the role doesn't come together or something like that. Something misses. It's very difficult to make it hit on all cylinders - it's just very rare.

It's easier to go somewhere if you've been there before.

I never felt comfortable in real life very well. It's always been an awkward kind of thing for me and so when I hit the stage I just sensed freedom. I sensed here's a place that I can have all the experiences of life and not feel uncomfortable about it.

This is a service station, we offer service. There is no higher purpose.

A warrior is not about perfection or victory or invulnerability. He's about absolute vulnerability.

First make peace inside yourself.

Nobody likes to change. There will always be resistance to change, and there always will be change. And the quicker you get to that, the easier it is. It's not such a difficult thing. If you entrench yourself and go, "By God, I will not change. I will not have this." Then, you're a dead man. We're great at adaptability. It's our strongest suit.

I am a good sewer. My mother taught me how to sew.

I never felt comfortable in real life very well. It's always been an awkward kind of thing for me and so when I hit the stage I just sensed freedom. I sensed, 'Here's a place that I can have all the experiences of life and not feel uncomfortable about it.'

Success is a very scary thing especially after you choose something and everything starts coming at you. It's absolutely frightening because the mind does things. It says, 'You've got to hold on to this or get away from this.

Birth is violent, and out of that violence is our only chance of rebirth.

The only people who ever called me a rebel were people who wanted me to do what they wanted.

American society is still puritanical.

Hollywood is all made up, anyway. Especially the stories and angles that people want to pin on you.

You have to struggle a bit, hustle a little, and be willing to go bankrupt. Once you're willing to do that, everything opens up and you get the freedom. My joke is that next year, I'll make the first film that costs zero dollars.

I can't get any satiation. My brain is wired in such a way that I - in my research, I probably have a lack of D1 and D2 receptor sites. These are dopamine receptor sites, and satiation is a process that involves a cascade.

The truth was that, you know, there was no reason to send me to Shattuck Military School. But it was a disciplinarian school.

In the sixties, you're still thinking you could do something about this slow disintegration of the body.

You give up your narcissism, your egotism. That's how you achieve chemistry.

Yes, you can get addicted to exercise.

Ageing's a difficult thing, moving closer to death, but it's okay. I've had a good time living, so I'm gonna have a good time dying.

The way you conquer fear is to feel it all the way, and then you'll find out that there's nothing there - it's just emotion.

Early on I decided that I was going to lie to the press. The best approach to talking about my personal life was to lie.

A career in acting, it's a learning process.

Class isn't something you buy. Look at you ... you've got on a $500 suit and you're still a low life.

Death isn't sad. The sad thing is: most people don't live at all.

Even though I play guitar, I don't do it publicly.

Every generation will be challenged morally once in their life about its government, and they will have to say where they stand.

Everything has a purpose, even this, and it's up to you to find it.

I don't see myself stopping, even though it gets harder and harder. Especially when you find out that you can't really compromise because of age.

I never felt comfortable in real life very well. It's always been an awkward kind of thing for me.

I never liked the Oscars. They didn't do too much for me at all. I felt like a big, vulnerable hunk of baloney being used to sell some products.

I should really be retired. But then you find out how much you get in retirement. I don't know how you make it. It's really rough!

If you do have limitations, then you have to find out what they are. And if you find out what they are and avoid them, then they aren't limiting anymore.

If you feel you have a film that's valid, you stick your ass on the line.

I'm not much of a song-and-dance man.

In another couple of generations, we're really gonna see the effect of this single-parent raising. And I think that's the problem. That's the disconnect. That's the miscommunication.

In fact, a child is not even considered a human being.

I've made a lot of mistakes and I don't regret any of them. Sometimes that's the only way you learn.

Just because your wife schmoozes with somebody too much, you can't go throwing the kids out with the bath water! And that's the way the law's tied up right now.

Maybe there was a time that you could count on the American home as being the moral fabric center and that they would teach you right, but with the liberty of just divorcing without a thought, it's horrible.

No one wants to spend too long inside their own darkness.

One thing we forget about Hispanics is that they're family-unit-oriented as a culture. So it's not all wild Mexican gangs out there, as is rumored.

Our educational system now teaches every kid the same thing. It's like rubber stamping!

People are not theirs thoughts, they think they are, and it brings them all kinds of sadness.

The corn that is B something 5 corn thats been genetically altered in the United States, it cant reproduce but it has huge kernels, its very sweet and its wonderful but the winds have blown this across into Mexico. And so the Mexican corn is being infected with the inability to reproduce.

There's no greater purpose than service to others.

To allow the fear to come on you and then pass through. If you keep cutting the fear off by intervening - let's say, taking a Xanax to try to cure it - you'll never understand what fear is really for. Fear is part of a survival mechanism. The way you conquer fear is to feel it all the way, and then you'll find out that there's nothing there - it's just emotion.

We all go through life and say a lot of things that we don't really mean.

We truly have an ancient part of the brain that was about survival when we were prey but we seem to have gone past prey. We eat everything and nothing eats us.

We're really all alone. We can't ever get inside another person's spirit, and see the world they do. So we are alone in that sense. The only way we have to communicate feelings is through words.

When you are making the one you are doing, you think it is the greatest film going. And then you do another one and it is a great film.

When you start thinking about death more than sex, you know you're getting old.

You do come to a point where you can get your life in control a bit. But going through life, you discover these deep, dark things in yourself that you cant run away from, so you have to learn to embrace them. I mean, the difference between a murderer and myself is only that I choose not to do it. But Im totally capable.

You've got to admit failure sometimes.