David Duchovny Quotes

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There are people who are really great musicians. I've met a lot of them. And I'm not a great musician. I'm adequate enough to be able to throw some chords together and write songs, but I can only feel that because I'm expressing something honestly, or in a heartfelt way, or in some way that's not bullshit, that in some way the songs have merit.

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

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

The only problem with Mitch [Pileggi, the actor who plays Skinner] is that his bald head means there's nothing to hold onto when he starts to buck.

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

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.

I think it was W.H. Auden who said he was lucky that his first favorite poet was Thomas Hardy, who was a good but not a great poet, because if you are exposed to the greats too soon it can just squash you as a writer.

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.

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

Our human nature is exactly the same as it was 500 years ago, let alone five years ago.

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

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

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.

I drive an electric car.

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

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 would say recently I've gotten back to perusing [Samuel] Beckett's novels. Listening to the way Donald Trump speaks without saying anything has made me think about language.

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.

I think patience is a skill and I wish I had it.

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.

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

I'm the one usually wearing the dress, which is what I would've preferred, but they wouldn't let me. It's been 15 years since I did that and my ass isn't as good as it used to be.

At one time there were voiceover artists, now there are celebrity voiceover artists. It's unfortunate because these people need the money less than the voiceover artist.

We all know people for that length of time and people change. They mature. There is a certain expectation that a fictional character does not change. But you can't go back and play him the same way.

I mean, there's chemistry in life and there's acting chemistry. I'm not saying they're the same thing, but they're as mysterious.

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

As I've gotten older I've become a devotee of 19th-century authors, such as Charles Dickens and George Eliot.

I look back the old old ones [X-Files series], from the beginning, and I'm kind of mortified by my acting! But I'm kind of impressed by my enthusiasm. I'm just thankful that I got to become better at what I did, and that we didn't get cancelled in the first year.

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

You do hear some strange rumours floating around. One I've heard is that I'm allergic to metal.

Women's fashion is a subtle form of bondage. It's men's way of binding them. We put them in these tight, high-heeled shoes, we make them wear these tight clothes and we say they look sexy. But they're actually tied up.

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.

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.

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

I'm very proud of my Scottish blood.

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.'

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.

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.

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