Dustin Hoffman Quotes

Next to that kid, we all look like onions.

Well first of all, it's hard to shoot a movie and break for a long time and then come back and do, in a sense, one of the biggest scenes that each character had.

Blame is for God and small children.

Myth is supposed to bring us together, but fantasy alienates us.

But I would reinvent myself if I could. As a sexy leading man! We all would like that, but I don't know how to.

The better you are as a parent, the richer the nest you've built, the more difficult it is for your kids to leave. So they have to invent things to dislike about you. And they're brilliant at it.

I hope to God I don't win an Oscar tomorrow night. It would really depress me if I did. I really don't deserve it. It wasn't that important a part anyhow.

God knows I've done enough crap in my life to grow a few flowers.

Look at the studio filled with glamorous merchandise. Fabulous and exciting bonus prizes. Thousands of dollars in cash. Over $150,000 just waiting to be won as we present our big bonanza of cash on Wheel Of Fortune.

People like Johnny Depp are an exception. He is the current model of what an actor should be. His body of work speaks volumes. He was so under-rated for so long, but he will have longevity - and it is such a gratifying thrill to see he is finally getting the recognition he deserves.

Lightbulbs die, my sweet. I will depart.

Now, I'm simply working with people I want to work with. I just want to have good working experiences and let the dice fall where they may.

I'd like to thank my parents for not practicing birth control.

My wife always says that I will be stuck with this forever: I am the difficult one. With Jack Nicholson they always said it was drugs. Warren Beatty is supposed to have screwed everything that jumped off the curve. I'll tell you, in reality a few of us had as many girls as Warren.

I feel cheated never being able to know what it's like to get pregnant, carry a child and breast-feed.

Tom [Courtenay] and Albert Finney met Ron Harwood on the dresser, so that's how it started. It's a wonderful documentary. It's called Tosca's Kiss and Mr Hardwood told me about it when I asked him what the genesis was. It was made in 1983 and Verdi, who was rich and successful, toward the end of his life decided to build a mansion for himself in Milan, where he lived, and he stipulated that when he died opera singers and musicians - because he knew so many who were no longer playing at the Scala and some were poor - could live there.

Many actors want to play Hamlet and Macbeth. Ever since I became an actor, from the very beginning I just wanted to play a Shetland pony. I cannot explain why

Well, 45-odd years of doing it, so we all pile up the things we like about directors and the things we don't like about directors. And sometimes they're very similar.

I stopped working a few years ago because I just lost a spark that I'd had before. I thought I'd just try writing, and maybe start directing, but I did it very quietly.

That's what we're all looking for, the place where the work leads us.

I mean, I don't think I'm alone when I look at the homeless person or the bum or the psychotic or the drunk or the drug addict or the criminal and see their baby pictures in my mind's eye. You don't think they were cute like every other baby?

Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me... aren't you?

You spend so much of your life basing yourself on what you think other people think of you. Then you realise that maybe one of the purposes of life is not to care.

If you can get out there and say I'm going to...I'm willing to fail at what I feel is right, that's it.

We all believe what we read. I read how Tom Cruise and I were two big egos holding up shooting. I know that isn't true - but if I wasn't making a movie with him and I just picked up the paper, I'd believe it. That's interesting, isn't it?

I love working, I'd be dead if I hadn't found myself as an actor I didn't have to be successful.

I think one of the things you have to be aware of as an actor is that if you come on the set and see the director standing there mouthing all the words while a scene is going on, that's usually a very bad sign because it means the director has already shot the scene in his head. He knows exactly the rhythm and the nuances that he wants delivered in the line and you're not going to dissuade him.

A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.

Poverty is not dated. Homeless people have looked the same since the thirteenth century. Go back to the times of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Look at photographs. It's amazing. The face on a homeless person is timeless.

There's a new medical crisis. Doctors are reporting that many men are having allergic reactions to latex condoms. They say they cause severe swelling. So what's the problem?

Acting didn't solve much! If it did, I would have ended up much less crazy than I am today, but I'm not. At least for me, acting is a relief - a relief to be able to admit certain things about myself and disguise in my work, in my characters.

I think 'retirement' goes hand in hand with people who make a living by having a 'job.' I don't think we-the .00001 percent of the population who are so fortunate to love passionately what we do-consider it a 'job.

Life is an occasion...rise to it.

I'm sixty-eight, I cry every chance I can.

There is something unnatural about marriage. These two people are not going to be the same people in a few years. The trick is to live your own life while sharing the same space.

Humanity seized to exist when Israel was established.

So when I told my parents I wanted to go into acting because I was flunking out of my first year of junior college, they were relieved that I had picked something other than joining the army. But I can't imagine how they had high hopes for me.

I got into acting so that I could meet girls. Pretty girls came later. First, I wanted to start off with someone with two legs, who'd smile at me and look soft.

I think the most insulting thing you can do to a director is to challenge when he or she is satisfied with your interpretation.

I walked out of the theater and started crying. My wife asked me, 'Why are you crying?' I said, 'Because I can't do that.' I didn't know how he did it. I've never seen anything like that. It's like this feat, this Rodin sculpture to me. It's like hearing an opera singer and the tears go down your face because it's not human what they're doing. It's like sounds of heaven.

We're all a little nit autistic.

Peter Pan, prepare to meet thy doom.

There were a few things that went into it. When you're doing something you're trying to be your audience at the same time, so if somebody tells me that this is a movie about retired opera singers, you think 'maybe I'll wait for it to come to DVD'. You're not rushing off to see it.

If there is no direct threat why are we invading?

Someone once said to me, 'Some of us choose to live with a lifeboat just a little bit out of our reach.' I'd like to reach a point where I no longer bullshit myself. I think that's the natural human condition - to lie to yourself. Because the truth is painful.

If you have this enormous talent, it's got you by the balls, it's a demon. You can't be a family man and a husband and a caring person and be that animal. Dickens wasn't that nice a guy.

It's very painful for us to feel we deserve a life. That's the toughest thing. That we deserve to have a life. That can take a lifetime.

Depressed, anxious, sad, frightened? Yes. But I've never been bored.