Daniel Day-Lewis Quotes

If you remain unsettled by a piece of writing, it means you are not watching the story from the outside; you've already taken a step toward it.

The greater your powers of self-delusion, the greater will be the apparent efficacy of this untruth.

I don't do all of this as an indulgence. I do it because I'm not a good enough actor to not do it.

I see a lot of movies. I love films as a spectator, and that's never obscured by the part of me that does the work myself. I just love going to the movies.

I suppose the place where I live is fairly remote, it would seem remote to some people.

I'm woefully one-track-minded.

I'm very often still very much alive for that other being and that other world long after the film is finished

Acting is about people. Other people. Otherwise, you're not acting, you're doing monologues.

The word Amendment itself is an encouraging thing, isn't it? Because an amendment, it tells of a system of government that allows for the improvement of itself. Just move forward a little bit, one day at a time.

At a certain age it just became apparent to me that this was probably the work that I would have to do.

I'm not keen on history being tampered with... to any extent.

I don't deal at all well with the relative amount of stuff I have to face already.

When I was younger, I made some decisions that I shouldn't have. And, in hindsight, I've almost always been wrong when I haven't listened to myself.

Ireland was a place for the renewal of hope and I still see it like that.

Quite honestly, if I were doing work related to a living being or historical being where there was visual or audio recordings available, I would find that extremely difficult because I don't know how you would avoid the process of mimicry. And mimicry, to me at any rate, is a very dull prospect.

I broke things to get attention.

Shoes are strange things. If you take your shoes off in a situation in which you're vulnerable, you'll feel 10 times more vulnerable.

I spend many months in apparently listless rumination out of which I hope something will emerge.

I suppose that anyone who does any kind of creative work some time in their life - especially as you grow into middle age! - you come to a time where you really question more and more frequently, whether you have anything else to offer. And at its worst, you feel utterly bereft of whatever creative force it takes to do that work.

It's easy to love humanity when you're this far away from it.

I'm not really a storyteller myself - I tend to get all tangled up when I try and tell stories.

Being at the centre of a film is a burden one takes on with innocence the first time. Thereafter, you take it on with trepidation.

Germans don't speak in a German accent, they just speak German.

I'm not actually a big musical fan.

The more articulate somebody is, the more suspicious I am of them. I like to feel that the important things remain unsaid.

I had a very vivid, almost hallucinatory moment in which I was engaged in a dialogue with my father...

In all fields of creativity you see the result of work that has become habit. Where the creative impulse has become flaccid or has died out altogether, and yet because it is our work and our life we continue to do it.

I hate the domestic life.

I like to cook things very slowly.

I can't re-examine work I did in the past with pride.

How people are around a director, it really does affect everything, every detail of the life of the movie.

I have always been intrigued by these lives I have never experienced.

I would like to have children while I've still got the energy. But then I have the feeling that when I have children I'll stop performing in the same way, because you don't really need to perform if you have children.

If you have a milkshake and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw and my straw reaches across the room and starts to drink your milkshake... I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!

I would wish for any one of my colleagues to have the experience of working with Martin Scorsese once in their lifetime.

Actors should never give interviews.

It must be hard interviewing actors.

I didn't like the idea of being foolish, but I learned pretty soon that it was essential to fail and be foolish.

I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.

God knows, I haven't always been successful.

The last time I was on a small set would've been probably My Left Foot.

I feel less often compelled to do the work than I was in the past.

I'd always felt very strongly in the power of vocation.

When I did make the decision to focus on acting, I think my mother was just relieved for me that I had finally started to focus.

I hate wasting people's time.

For as long as I can remember, the thing that gave me a sense of wonderment and renewal... has always been the work of other actors.

Perhaps I'm particularly serious, because I'm not unaware of the potential absurdity of what I'm doing.

I don't know what impression you might have of the way I live. I live in a quiet place. I do not live as a hermit, though other people would prefer it if I did.