Jack Nicholson Quotes

I'm against cronyism, and I had to learn that early on. Like, I don't have an entourage, because I saw the negative effects of those things.

It [TV] is the cancer of film. It's why people can't be educated to film. In the late '60s, we expected to see a movie or two every week and be stimulated, excited and inspired. And we did. Every week after week. Antonioni, Goddard, Truffaut - this endless list of people. And then comes television and home video. I know how to work exactly for the big screen, but it doesn't matter what I think about the art of movie-making versus TV.

When it's over for a woman, it's over. You're not getting an appeal.

For a long time, I was afraid to be alone. I had to learn how to be alone. And there are still times when I think, Uh-oh! I gotta talk to somebody here or I'm gonna go crazy! But I like to be alone. Now I do. I really do. There's a big luxury in solitude.

I'm Irish. I think about death all the time.

In other words, I wouldn't like to be an actor if I could only be real. I like to get wild, behaviorally wild, and it's crazy to think of any form where it's just one way.

My point of view, while extremely cogent, is unpopular. . . . That the repressive nature of the legalities vis-a-vis drugs are destroying the legal system and corrupting the police system.

I love discourse. I'm dying to have my mind changed. I'm probably the only liberal who read Treason, by Ann Coulter. I want to know, you understand? I like listening to everybody. This to me is the elixir of life.

I don't even own a cell phone.

You can't say, "I'm gonna make a hit movie." You're as dead as you could be.

I come from the Lynchs of Sligo. You know, I went there, but I looked in the phone book and there are nine million Lynches in Sligo.

Comedy is more difficult. You can look at scenes when you're doing a drama like, “Maybe it works,” but in comedy, when you're doing it, either it works or it doesn't. You have to keep doing it until it does, and the requirement is more.

If you get an impulse in a scene, no matter how wrong it seems, follow the impulse. It might be something and if it ain't - take two!

I did not want to be coming off the stage at the mercy of what somebody else told me I did.

[on the birth of his son after having had two daughters] I finally got it right.

I've been too many places. I'm like the bad penny.

It's the post-literate generation that is most disturbing to a movie-maker. The explosions and the knifings. People like to go to what's hot and you can't get past a certain gross unless you involve children who go more than once.

A man needs a private life. With no ability to have a private life, one thing leads to another, and before you know it we have Bill and Monica. We need to get real about things. Humans are humans. Why should we expect more?

There's only two people in your life you should lie to... the police and your girlfriend.

I know I can act. There aren't too many other jobs I know how to do. Financially, I've lost money and made money, but I know my way around financially. I've been too many places. I'm like the bad penny.

I've never lost a friend over work. I come from a small-town environment and I remember my childhood impressions that, if you were a conniver or a fink or whatever, everybody knew about it and you were a louse for the rest of your life. So I never lost those values in some way.

I'm such a perfectionist. I always feel overpraised or whatever. In the abstract, I know I'm a good person, a good professional. But it's nice to be noticed a little bit, ain't it?

Just because you're perfectionist doesn't mean you're perfect.

I suppose I can do more for a script as an actor than as a writer - in the film sense.

I didn't know that my sister was really my mother until I was thirty-seven years old. But life has taught me that there have been a lot of things that I didn't know.

I'm very contra my constituency in terms of abortion because I'm positively against it. I don't have the right to any other view. My only emotion is gratitude, literally, for my life.

If you want your freedom, you have to be willing to work hard to exercise it.

I assume most of the characters I play are exactly like me.

A lot of people can't remember things because they weren't actually there to begin with - they don't take it all in.

I'm the age where we didn't have television as kids. So when I saw my nieces and nephews watching Howdy Doody, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, and so forth, I thought the world had gone mad.

Through all permutations and youthful poetry, I came to believe that the film actor was the great "literateur" of his time.

Life doesn't have to be about finding Osama bin Laden or becoming the president of the United States. Life is about the little things, which is one of the things you learn when you get older.

OK, the director makes the movie. But some movies can't get made without someone like me in them.

The way I reacted to 9/11 was I decided I didn't want to do any movies that are sad or critical. I decided I didn't want to make my living depressing people or making them go home sick, so I just decided I wanted to do comedy for a while and study it for a while. It doesn't mean everybody should do that, but that was my reaction.

Even in the most sophisticated person, it is the primitive eye that watches the film.

Believe it or not, I supported Richard Nixon on the issue of presidential privilege. How could anyone conceive of being the president of the United States and think that every single thing that you say or do can become a part of the public record? It just seems so stupid to me.

If I were an Arab-American, I would insist on being profiled. This is not the time for civil rights. There are larger issues for Americans.

I can't hit on women in public any more. I didn't decide this; it just doesn't feel right at my age.

I love working with women directors. They don't mind making you cute.

If you think you’re attractive, you’re always attractive.

I think of a man and I take away reason and accountability.

I guess this proves there are as many nuts in the Academy as anywhere else.

The minute that you're not learning I believe you're dead.

I'm not hard to get along with.

Frankly, I got into the movies because I like the movies a lot.

I don't have any fear of intimacy, but rather thrive on it, which is rare in a public person.

I never thought in terms of typing myself, because I wasn't that successful. After an actor has done a few pieces of work, his naïveté is the part of the craft he has to nurture most.

I'd give my goddamned soul for just a glass of beer.