Jack Nicholson Quotes

Having kids is the most innately positive thing that anyone can do.

There's probably no one who understands Method acting better academically than I do, or actually uses it more in his work. But it's funny - nobody really sees that. It's perception versus reality, I suppose.

Human beings are always going to find interesting ways of making a mess of their lives. It's human nature.

I am a person who is trained to look other people in the eye.

The average celebrity meets, in one year, ten times the amount of people that the average person meets in his entire life.

You make me want to be a better man.

I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me.

My motto is: more good times.

It always bothered me when people came off stage and were told how great they were. They weren't, really, in my opinion. It was then I started thinking that, contrary to conventional wisdom, film was the artful medium for the actor, not the stage.

There's a tacit agreement today that the white male is the only legitimate target for any and all satire, criticism, and so forth. And we pretty much just accept it.

There's a period just before you start a movie when you start thinking, I don't know what in the world I'm going to do. It's free-floating anxiety. In my case, though, this is over by lunch the first day of shooting.

I was invited to join the MGM cartoon department. But if I'd started work in animation I'd have had to take a cut in salary, so I didn't.

Well, a girlfriend once told me never to fight with anybody you don't love.

Never rub another man's rhubarb.

The camera photographs what's there.

I want a big 25-foot pink statue that holds my grave. Or I also might like the way the Indians did it. They hang you up on the top of a tree and the birds eat you. No, really I would probably choose cremating.

Million bucks won't see you through a major health crisis.

I think human beings have a basic instinct to be free and explore their world in their own way. I've always been driven to look at life as something which we should try to plunge into rather than sit back. You have to be able to have fun and keep creating a sense of excitement to how you approach the world.

I'm certainly not as tough as people think. I'm not a fighter and so forth. I'd just as soon go home.

The fuel for the sports fan is the ability to have private theories.

Always try in interviews to avoid the cliches about the problems of public life.

I think it's good if a man gives a woman some time to herself because I think we all need that and we can all benefit from that. It doesn't imply a rejection of the other person, just a sense that because we do have our separate identities, sometimes you have to be less involved in another person's life or need to have that other person be less involved in your life.

The only way to break a bad habit was to replace it with a better habit.

I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace.

Played tennis for years. But you can't improve at tennis after you're 50. You get to be in your 40s, and suddenly you're a doubles player.

I envy people of faith. I'm incapable of believing in anything supernatural.

Take caution in your tone, commander. I'm a fair man, but this -- heat is making me absolutely crazy.

My only emotion is gratitude, literally, for my life.

Beer, it's the best damn drink in the world.

The less people know about me, the easier my job is.

I take responsibility for my successes as well as my failures. But when I look at my professional mistakes, I'm always left with the feeling that maybe I should have done more.

I resist all established beliefs. My religion basically is to be immediate, to live in the now. It's an old cliche, I know, but it's mine. I envy people of faith. I'm incapable of believing in anything supernatural. So far, at least. Not that I wouldn't like to. I mean, I want to believe. I do pray. I pray to something ... up there. I have a God sense. It's not religious so much as superstitious. It's part of being human, I guess ... Do unto others: How much deeper into religion do we really need to go?

If men are honest, everything they do and everywhere they go is for a chance to see women.

I used to be very quick, I would be able to leave the room and be back before you noticed. When you can't do that anymore you need to change the style of how you do things. But I'm very interested in life and you don't want to lose that.

Charlize Theron and Cate Blanchett are very good actresses.

If it is difficult to know yourself as an individual, it seems to be more complex as a couple. So if you say, "Oh I like a person who is like this and that," you might take away the possibility of seeing the only one that might be right for you.

You're anachronistic when you know that your feelings aren't going to have any effect on anything.

Because of the way the business is structured, I have sometimes turned down scripts that I might otherwise have accepted had I known who was directing them.

I don't know if this is a true statistic, but I heard somewhere that there are three times as many single women over forty as single men. That's what we got from the women's movement. The chickens have come home to roost.

I've always understood money; it's not a big mystical thing to me.

I don't remember if I've been asked seriously to direct a picture. I understand that. I'm very good business for people as an actor and perhaps they'd rather I didn't.

With my sunglasses on, I'm Jack Nicholson. Without them, I'm fat and 60.

I have never lied to you, I have always told you some version of the truth.

You have to do every movie one at a time. Trilogy is contrary to this ideology. My nightmare is to wake up and find myself the host of a TV series.

For an actor, style comes last. You first have to implement the whole thing, but your style comes from the subconscious, which is the best part an actor brings to his work.

When I am cast in a movie where I feel that the woman's part is more interesting, I usually start thinking about Spencer Tracy and Fred Astaire. They seem to be the most clear actors when working with women.

Kids are life's only guaranteed, bona fide upside surprise.

I don't play golf competitively. I tell everybody that I cheat so they won't gamble with me. That's why you can't watch football. Everybody's gambling. They don't want to watch the game; they watch the spread.