Jack Nicholson Quotes

The stage has a certain discipline. But the ultimate standard is more exacting in film, because you have to see yourself and you are your own toughest critic.

I resist all established beliefs. My religion basically is to be immediate, to live in the now.

You can't handle the truth!

Women -- a mistake, or did He do it to us on purpose?

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.

When I was in high school, I earned the pimple award and every other gross-out award.

I love writing, but I stopped because I felt I was more effective approaching filmmaking from a different vantage point.

I'm a scamp. I don't deny it. I like myself.

I'm content with the fact that I made a decent effort. That's what I've always worried about: that I wouldn't try hard enough.

I sort of understood that when I first started: that you shouldn't repeat a success. Very often you're going to, and maybe the first time you do, it works. And you love it. But then you're trapped.

I thought of myself as part of the general filmmaking effort. And as my scope broadened, I began to think about directing. I wanted to be the guy who got to say whether the dress is red or blue.

Comedy is much harder, it's a lot more exacting. You can't just be real and you can't just use the same kind of techniques you use to fill up a regular scene.

When you look at life retrospectively you rarely regret anything that you did, but you might regret things that you didn't do.

This town needs an enema!

I love women who have a strong sense of themselves because I know I have a pretty good idea of what I want out of life and I like to be around other people who are also pretty secure. It just makes things easier.

I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free, 'cause then they're gonna get real busy killin' and maimin' to prove to you that they are. Oh yeah, they're gonna talk to you and talk to you and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em.

I'm the last guy in the world to feel overlooked by the Academy.

You know, I think I understand what you're like now. You're very beautiful and you think men are only interested in you because you're beautiful. But you want them to be interested in you because you're you. The problem is, aside from all that beauty, you're not very interesting. You're rude, you're hostile, you're sullen, you're withdrawn... oh, I know- you want someone to look past all that at the real person underneath. But the only reason anyone would bother to look past all that is because you're beautful. Ironic, isn't it? In an odd way you're your own problem.

I know I can act. There aren't too many other jobs I know how to do

I just know that sameness, repetition, and conceptualizing are the acting craft's adversaries, and it seems more intelligent to start off within a framework where those things are, to some degree, taken out of your hands.

Many actors will try something different once, but if it isn't a box office success they'll never do it again. In my opinion, there's no point in going on with this job if you do the same thing over and over again.

In the real world there's an after-effect of disappointment if you lose an argument. But if, to begin with, you're set up not to have this particular autonomy, then you're not disappointed.

I'm a New Wave baby, so I got very stimulated by foreign film.

I'm very fortunate in the sense that outside of cohabitating relationships and so forth, I've always got on just as well with women.

I'm fairly well off. I can't poor-mouth that away from people's sensibilities about me, which is something I worry about as an actor. But it would be real stupid of me to do something for the money.

I only take Viagra when I'm with more than one woman.

One of my school friends' parents owned a minigolf course, and a bunch of us kids would play there all day in the summer. Two-under deuces was a good score.

Once you've started a film you don't become a wet noodle. You must have that conflictual interface because you don't know, and they don't know. It's through conflict that you come out with something that might be different, better than either of you thought to begin with.

Most of the early part of an actor's career, you do the jobs you get.

We live, we die, and the wheels on the bus go round and round.

You can follow the action, which gets you good pictures. You can follow your instincts, which will probably get you in trouble. Or, you can follow the money, which nine times out of ten will get you closer to the truth.

Women are sort of like motorcycle gangs with me. They get really shy and polite. I don't know why.

I would never say, "I'm retired." I believe if I decided to just not work, in six months everybody would just forget whether you were working or not.

In this industry, there are only two ways up the ladder. Rung by rung or claw your way to the top. It's sure been tough on my nails.

I have given a name to my pain, and it is Batman.

We learn how to kiss, or to drink, talk to our buddies-all the things that you can't really teach in social studies or history-we all learn them at the movies.

I'm in the movie business; it's meant to be very cutthroat. But you won't find anybody that ever says I cheated them or manipulated them.

You can call me Joker. And as you can see, I'm a lot happier.

I wasn't a babe in the woods. I'd watched a lot of stars, from James Dean to Brando, and I'd seen everybody alive work at MGM. I had a certain old-timer's quality, even though I was young and new, and drew on what I believed before I made it.

I don't believe in God now. I can still work up an envy for someone who has a faith. I can see how that could be a deeply soothing experience.

We are going as fast as we can as soon as we can. We're in a race against time, until we run out of money.

Acting is everybody's favorite second job.

As an actor, I want to give in to the collaboration with the director because I don't want my work to be all the same. The more this can be done with comfort, the more variety my work has had.

Before I moved into the mainstream of American movies, I wrote a script as an experiment. I wanted to get very far away from the clichés about the three-act play - structure, development.

You are more thoughtful because you don't act as quickly anymore. When I turned 70 it was the first time I felt young for my age. Fifty dropped on me like a ton of bricks - there is something about that number - but when 70 came along I felt good about it.

I have never felt brutalized as an actor. Many actors do, some times, but I've never had that experience. If I'm not happy with the balance, I just won't work with that person again.

I respect the social graces enormously. How to pass the food. Don't yell from one room to another. Don't go through a closed door without a knock. Open the doors for the ladies. All these millions of simple household behaviors make for a better life. We can't live in constant rebellion against our parents - it's just silly. I'm very well mannered. It's not an abstract thing. It's a shared language of expectations.

Son, we live in a world that has walls and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You!?