Chicago my favourite American city. I'm very much a typical midwesterner, and I don't think the condition is curable.
John MalkovichTo a certain extent in Hollywood you're a product, and your product is whatever sells the most, and whatever sells the most is whatever the public likes to see you do - if anything.
John MalkovichIt's a little bit hard to have personal things subject to public scrutiny, and it's a pressure that other people aren't under, but then they're under a lot of pressures that we're not under.
John MalkovichImagine how asleep or utterly unperceptive and clueless you would have to be not to see yourself as absurd for the most part.
John MalkovichArt is not disposable. If you want it, you have to hold it and smell it and touch it and read the credits and enjoy it and put it on your wall.
John MalkovichAnd may the best of you - for it will only be the best of you, and even then only in the rarest and briefest moments - succeed in framing that most basic of questions, 'how do we live?'
John MalkovichI grew tired of religion some time not long after birth. I believe in people, I believe in humans, I believe in a car, but I don't believe something I can't have absolutely no evidence of for millenniums. And it's funny, people think analysis or psychiatry is mad, and they go to church.
John MalkovichI probably have more female friends than any man I've ever met. What I like about them is that almost always they're generally mentally tougher, and they're better listeners, and they're more capable of surviving things. And most of the women that I like have a haunted quality - they're sort of like women who live in a haunted house all by themselves.
John MalkovichWhat you really need to build a character is exactly what you don't have in the movies - time. You know, movies are like a line drawing. You have to make very quick decisions, which are, in the end instinctive. Or you make a decision to say "Well, maybe I can do that, because... Oh, that could be irritating after a while, or distracting, etc. etc." Some of it is a matter of time, always.
John MalkovichI have probably four or five male friends who have a real strong masculine side but some degree of a feminine side, too. They're pretty rare, whereas I think women with a masculine side are much less rare.
John MalkovichMost of the women that I like have a haunted quality - they're sort of like women who live in a haunted house by themselves.
John MalkovichFor a while I wanted to be a professional baseball pitcher, and then I wanted to be a musician and then sometimes I think I'd like to start a store for gift-wrapping Christmas presents... But I feel I could do most things I set my mind to, except mechanical things, I'm not very good at that.
John MalkovichWell, I design costumes because I started with the theater in Chicago, but somehow a few lines just sort of fell to me to do it. And I studied it in school and I always liked it.
John MalkovichWe have a tendency to think everyone's idiotic and everyone's only doing something idiotic, and the world is controlled by a not-so-secret group of morons. There's great truth in that, I suppose, but then it's also not true.
John MalkovichA dog that has rabies probably will do things it wouldn't do if it didn't have rabies. But that doesn't change the fact that it has rabies.
John MalkovichI only have two rules for my newly born daughter: she will dress well and never have sex.
John MalkovichI think 1973 was the nadir of fashion. When you watch the coverage from that era, you're struck by the astonishing ugliness of the clothes.
John MalkovichThere's no worse feeling in the world than realizing the play you've directed doesn't work.
John MalkovichAlong with the good qualities, if someone isn't vulnerable I can't be around them to a certain extent. And I don't mean vulnerable to me or vulnerable to me in a sexual way. I just mean vulnerable, period.
John MalkovichThe most evocative thing to me is probably when a writer and a group of performers can collectively put together something compelling that asks the really simple question: 'How do we live?'
John MalkovichI know I have a fairly strong feminine side. I find myself really distanced from male behavior.
John MalkovichI can see how, given a certain degree of sensitivities, proclivities and rage, I could have ended up differently.
John MalkovichThe media can make anything true or untrue. So if you do 80 films and you play a bad guy ten times, then you're a bad guy, and then the media repeats that.
John MalkovichI was a very good baseball player and football player as a kid, but my father always told me - occasionally while striking me - that I was much more interested in how I looked playing baseball or football than in actually playing. And I think there's great truth in that.
John MalkovichMuch of what you do as an actor - it's who's around you, what's the environment, where do you fit into this thing. That's really work that's impossible to do on your own, at least for me. I find it hard to pre-plan every element of everything I do. It's not my thing.
John MalkovichNothing you do particularly matters. But I'm not sure that's a great excuse for doing it poorly.
John MalkovichAll you have is the writer's imagination. You have a very limited time to take this imaginary person and bring the details of their life, as you perceive them, to life. You attempt to do to that as fully and as vibrantly as you can. It's depressing to read how much you've failed. And it's not even particularly instructive or necessary to read how you succeeded because in the end don't you have to judge that?
John MalkovichThere are many, many benefits to being known for whatever it is you do. To deny that would be sort of asinine and vulgar.
John MalkovichMy father was a very contradictory man. I mean, most environmentalists in America in the 1950s - of which there were hardly any - were not... paratroopers. But my father was in the 82nd Airborne, it was just like that.
John Malkovich