Jeremy Piven Quotes

HBO does something that most networks don't do which is give a show a chance to find their voice.

All I've done is work... I arrived in Los Angeles in my early 20s and I've been pounding the pavement ever since.

People need to know you have to walk through that rejection, and it's only going to fuel you. If you can somehow look at it like it's a gift, you're just going to regroup, and work harder, and go deeper. So just embrace it.

If you are an incredibly reactive person and you are working on your lowest level, and if you continuously give into your dark side and are angry, and screaming, and breaking things, and you do that for hours and hours on end, you are going to be incredibly exhausted. That's just the way life is.

One of the great things going on right now is social media and you get a real sense, immediately, about what people are feeling and thinking.

I've been on the stage my entire life as an actor.

I have been drumming my whole life.

We all have so many different elements inside of us and we're not all one thing.

Sometimes in life, we have to continue to learn the same lesson until it sticks.

I'm in the middle of just trying to impress my nieces, who think I work for the bus company because they saw a picture of me on a bus. I did an independent movie with Mark Pellington (I Melt with You), and then tried to impress my nieces again, by starring opposite Miley Cyrus (in So Undercover). So, basically I'm just trying to get some respect from my family.

The reality is that I'm an actor from the Midwest and I was 40 movies into it before I started 'Entourage'.

Everyone's journey is completely different.

I like to box. It's a great release.

I'm not a video game guy. I would rather throw around a football.

I was in a play directed by my father, and I was doing a fight scene, and the choreography went haywire, and I flew backward over a chair and ripped my thumb all the way to my wrist and had to have surgery to sew up all the tendons in there.

I'm a stage actor. That is what I do.

I'm just mystified and fascinated by women, and I'm still single. Hence all of that, and the fact that I celebrate them so much, I understand that I'm unevolved at this exact moment to share my life with one. I wouldn't inflict that upon anyone yet. But, I'm getting closer.

I'm acting with the best actors in the world.

There are so many great directors that I haven't worked with and that I would love to work with.

As an actor you want to explore something you haven't done.

I'm just a stage actor from Chicago.

When you do a television show in the States, you get the pilot, and then it's the great unknown. That's the way it is. It's this great leap of faith. It's the Russian roulette of art.

I had never really been around cards.

I grew up on the stage, where you just throw yourself into projects and don't get in your own way.

Quitting the show was a complete anomaly in my life and my career. I've never missed out on anything. I relished the opportunity to be on Broadway... It's the holy grail for people like me.

The stage is my love, it's where I started and where I do my best work.

I want to be radical on the inside, but not on the outside.

Well, here's all you need to know. Classes, nothing before 11. Beer, its your best friend, you drink a lot of it. Women, you're a freshman, so its pretty much out of the question. Will you have a car? ... Someone on your hall will, find them and make friends with them on the first day.

You know the Greeks didn't write obituaries. They only asked one question after a man died: "Did he have passion?"

John Cusack and I have been friends since childhood, and the fact that we're in so many films together is, no pun intended, serendipitous.

It sounds clichéd, but I think the greatest lesson is to not take things personally.

What's this? You're wearing the shirt of the band you're going to see? Don't be that guy.

You're trying to figure out a way to go back in time and spend more time with your father. Who wouldn't want to do that?

If masturbation is a crime then I should be on death row.

Robert Rodriguez is a genius, and I'm a huge fan of his.

Sometimes - this is a tough one - not everyone can handle the truth. Sometimes you have to take a beat. But if you can take that beat, and take the high road, it'll serve you in the long run.

I wrote a script and I've been whispering in director's ears for a really long time and I'd love to direct.

One of the great things that you should never do that I learned from John Malkovich is to never judge your characters.

With me, growing up in a theater family and having them be so supportive, from the jump, and being a part of this theater community where the brass ring is working, wherever that is, and then to play a character where he's not really concerned with that and is really just concerned with the monetary aspect of the job, and then to be identified with someone who is the antithesis of your energy and where you come from, has been a very interesting and surreal ride.

I do yoga. I've been doing yoga for over 20 years and I love it.

The Dalai Lama was once asked for his favorite chant, and he said it was better not to have a favorite anything, which I think is a great thought.

I'm not a boy now. I'm a man, I hope. I hope I've had my artistic bar mitzvah somewhere.

I grew up in the theatre.

For the record, if you're not a stage actor, climbing onto Broadway and tackling something like David Mamet is not an easy thing to do.

I have a place in Chicago and I get there as much as I can... The city is so unbelievably beautiful. It's one of the greatest cities on the planet. My heart beats differently when I'm in Chicago. It slows down and I feel more at ease.

We all deal with issues of time. The first thing you do in the morning is look at the clock to see what time it is.

I'm one of these people who would rather show you than tell you through the performance.

For so much of my career I've been trying to find little things and make something out of it.