John Malkovich Quotes

The projects I look for to produce or direct would not be ones in which I would want to act.

I don't wake up drenched in sweat because I haven't been on stage in years.

Some directors expect you to do everything; write, be producer, psychiatrist. Some just want you to die in a tragic accident during the shooting so they can get the insurance.

Some people die before their time so that others can live. It's a cornerstone of civilization.

There will be people who hate everything you do. And some people will really love it. But that's not really different from the people who really hate it.

I think probably when I was little, after my brother turned on me, I just had to play by myself or with myself. I've always done that. I think either it's some kind of weirdly competitive streak or it takes my mind off whatever's bothering me.

I always wanted to be fashionable.

With acting it's your neck up there in the end. And if you think the director can't help you it's one thing. But if you feel they're reining you in when they need to be giving you some rope, or vice versa, then I just don't tolerate that.

I like to direct movies, but I don't like to goof around for eight years talking about it. And it's pretty irritating to get a movie on. So to complicate it by having more irritation as a director, I don't really need it. And because I direct a great deal still, but in the theater, I kind of get that anyway. Which is not at all to say I would never do it again, or it would never happen again.

When I have failed as an actor I've always thought it was my fault. But when I direct something, I wouldn't want the actors to think it was their fault.

I don't have a great intellect, and I can't compete with people who do. I feel certain things. And all I know, and all I can do, is what I feel.

Sigmund Freud said we act out our own dreams, but if you are only an actor you are not acting out your own dream. You are simply participating in someone else's dream.

Actors generally get to do things you probably shouldn't do in real life - well, at least as much as one might like to or be tempted to. Though I suppose a lot of actors just go ahead and do it, don't they?

When you think of how history is revealed, we know certain things to be facts at certain periods of time, which turn out not to be so factual as time marches on.

And if you say a word about this over the radio, the next wings you see will belong to the flies buzzing over your rotting corpse.

Failure's a natural part of life.

It's funny - people think analysis or psychiatry is mad, and THEY go to CHURCH.

You can be a mason and build 50 buildings, but it doesn't mean you can design one.

I love to watch good actors who surprise and amuse me.

I've always been an avid reader. Everyone in my family read a lot. Considering we were from a little town, we were pretty literate.

I think people seem to sort of associate me with danger. And I don't see that at all.

If I hear a film clip, or I happen to see some image from a film - you go to a film festival, and they show some clip of the movies you've been in, most of the time I sit there and go, "Oh God, I should have... should have... that was terrible." But I think that's a natural part of this work, because really, your work is never over. Of course I can leave it alone and walk off the set and never think about it again when it's done. But your work is really ongoing all the time.

Of course it's trivial, but then most things are.

Where women are concerned, the rule is never to go out with anyone better dressed than you.

Theater is so ephemeral, and I love that.

I'm more comfortable with whatever's wrong with me than my father was whenever he felt he failed or didn't measure up to the standard he set.

You can't work in the movies. Movies are all about lighting. Very few filmmakers will concentrate on the story. You get very little rehearsal time, so anything you do onscreen is a kind of speed painting.

It seems whenever I've had a method or what I perceived to be an intellectual groundwork of some sort - a kind of game plan - it's always been the most morbid failure.

I like to have fun at work. It's okay if I don't. I've had that a few times. But generally, I'm someone who has a lot of fun at work, because I like my job. I think it's a fantastic job, at least that part of it is a fantastic job. And I like to have fun, and I personally feel that whether you're talking about the cast or the crew or the director or any combination thereof, that when people feel involved and comfortable and they feel like their work is being supported, that's the best environment to do good work.

I don't want a trillion-dollar empire to run.

The world is ruled by violence, or at least the imminent threat of violence. It always has been.

I wouldn't describe myself as lacking in confidence, but I would just say that - the ghosts you chase you never catch.

I don't care what other people think. I don't think it matters.

People get up, they go to work, they have their lives, but you'll never see the headlines say, 'Six billion people got along rather well today.' You'll have the headline about the 30 people who shot each other.

It's tough to figure out how do we compete in Europe and North America, when obviously a living wage for us is very different than a living wage in Indonesia.

I wouldn't say anything I ever did in film would be something I'd use the word proud about. I've done better work in the theater.

Scary monsters are like Hula Hoops. They come in and out of fashion.

In New York in the Forties or Fifties, everybody's in a suit, an overcoat and a hat.

The theater is so disappointing, really, that it's hard to go again and again. It's just too heartbreaking. I'd rather watch football or play a game or read.

My father could be very distancing. My clearest memory is of him squatting, watering plants for hours and hours at a time, completely silent. He was very self-contained; my mother was more outgoing and chatty and social. I'm certainly more like her.

People always say life is short. I've never been convinced of that - mine seems to have a tendency to go on and on.

I wasn`t really raised to be the type of person to have doubts.

Anybody doing something brings something to it. It's not for me to say if it's "growth". Just by the nature of everyone has a different take on the material. Some people would.

I'm more likely to lose my temper on a film set than almost anywhere. Often the level of idiocy is so exalted that it's impossible to comprehend.

Films take too long. There's too much BS, too much nonsense. If I want to do a play, I just call the theater, whether it's here, or in Paris or Mexico or Spain or London or whatever, and say, "I want to do this, are you interested?" They'll answer the next day. With a movie, it's all, "Oh, I see this film as blah blah blah." They don't know what you're talking about, they don't care.

When you do a really good play, the audience and the performers are looking into the same looking glass, the same microscope. And the specimen they are looking at is human life and that's why I do it, that's why I like it.

I was a very good baseball and football player, but my father always told me I was much more interested in how I looked playing baseball or football than in actually playing. There's great truth in that.

I don't understand how somebody wouldn't have a sense of humor about themselves.