Nicolas Cage Quotes

I never say never, but I haven't been given the quality of script to compel me to go on television.

Snakes are sometimes perceived as evil, but they are also perceived as medicine. If you look at an ambulance, there's the two snakes on the side of the ambulance. The caduceus, or the staff of Hermes, there's the two snakes going up it, which means that the venom can also be healing.

I may be alone in this, but I do sense the power of film, in that movies have the ability to literally change people's minds. That's pretty powerful stuff when you consider that.

My father always used to say to me, it doesn’t matter what the profession is, but if they’re the best in their field, it will always be fascinating to watch.

Picasso said art is a lie that tells the truth. What if you just want to tell the truth and not lie about it?

I think what makes people fascinating is conflict, it's drama, it's the human condition. Nobody wants to watch perfection.

I would definitely return to Austria. They were all good experiences for me, but definitely Austria because there were some ancient Celtic, sacred sites that were in the forest that were quite beautiful.

You can choose your family sometimes. You can choose people, it could be a teacher, it could be a professor, it could be someone you work with that actually genuinely cares about you and wants you to succeed.

Every great story seems to begin with a snake.

As a teenager I was more of an anarchist, but now I want people to thrive and be harmonious.

My father once said, 'If you're in the desert and you're dying of thirst, are you going to drink a glass of blood or are you going to drink a glass of water?' I think what he was trying to say, interesting coming from my blood father, is sometimes there are people in your family that can be toxic.

I was very happy with Vampire's Kiss, which in my opinion was almost like an independent laboratory to start realizing some of my more expressionistic dreams with film performance. Then using what I had learned in Vampire's Kiss and putting it into a very big action movie in the form of Face/Off with John Woo. If you look at those two movies back to back, you can see where I stole from my performance in Vampire's Kiss.

I really would like to be able to face all my superstitions that may have existed and walk under the ladder and do everything you're not supposed to do.

I'm not a trained actor. I'm someone who is autodidactic and learned on my own.

Yeah, my real name is Coppola. I changed it because they'd think I was some nepotism-oriented kid.

I needed to change my name just to liberate myself and find out I could do it without walking into a Hollywood casting office with the name Coppola.

In the beginning my energy and passion for acting came from an almost punk rock need to express a lot of anger wherever that may have come from. As I got older, it became or is coming more from a place of wanting to use the craft to help others in some way, to hold a mirror up to the situations that we're going through, to actually be more cautious about the way that I use the power of film and to see if there's anything that I can do in the performances that will resonate in the public a similar string that's on people's minds and is on my mind. That way we have that relationship.

I do like to move and get physical in my movies.

You aren't a true internationalist until you've supplied weapons to kill your own countrymen.

Good science fiction is intelligent. It asks big questions that are on people's minds. It's not impossible. It has some sort of root in the abstract.

With the advent of this kind of TMZ culture, it sadly seems to have infiltrated the vanguard of film commentary. I see these reviews sometimes where I think, well, you have a right to say whatever you want about my work, and I will listen whether it's good or bad and see if there's something that I might work with, but personal issues don't have a place in film commentary.

That was one of the reasons why I wanted to tell the story of Colin Price. I saw someone in this fictionalized political character that was trying to do something important for his city. He meant well, but then you see that the human flaws had really derailed his past. It seems to be happening more and more in our country. I wanted to hold a mirror up to that.

I'm not an anarchist any more. I still love the Sex Pistols, but I don't want to be a punk rocker all the time, but I do want to carry on exploring new forms of acting.

Helen Mirren is someone that I have really admired ever since I saw her in Excalibur. That was the first thing I said to her. "I loved you as Morgan Le Fay."

Mike Myers as Austin Powers makes me laugh - that was genius - and Daffy Duck makes me laugh, but I like odd behavior. I don't like hip dialogue and one-liners and all that sort of cool, sophomoric comedy. It's just not for me.

I think a good movie is a good movie whether that falls into a genre or not.

I'm sticking my tongue out in scenes to try to make that work in 3D. I'm thinking I'll try to get my tongue all the way out to the second row of the audience.

I'm an enormous admirer of Christopher Lee. He's somebody, along with Vincent Price, who I celebrate, and I wanted my movies to show that celebration and that honoring of these great film stars that were unafraid to go into horror and Grand Guignol and the macabre.

I'm always curious about what happens when we die. And I'd like to think that somehow the spirit goes on. I'd rather not think that it's just about this.

I'm always going to judge somebody on their work ethic, and whether or not they made me feel something, or whether or not I felt they did a good job. To me, it's important to try to block anything personal out and look at the performance, in any field.

I had been making a lot of family oriented movies, which I also like. But I still have a passion for the midnight audience and for midnight movies.

Remakes are always a challenge and they always are sitting ducks.

Those who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action.

I was always shocked when I went to the doctor's office and they did my X-ray and didn't find that I had eight more ribs than I should have or that my blood was the color green.

I think that the best characters are the ones who both manage to be attractive and repulsive at the same time.

Peter Fonda is the reason I became a motorcyclist. I saw Easy Rider and I bought a motorcycle the next day, and I rode it all the way from LA to San Francisco.

Nobody can make a movie as exciting as Jerry Bruckheimer. When it's a Jerry Bruckheimer movie that it's going to have lots of chrome and gloss, it's going to be sexy, and it's going to be big and fun.

I'm not really interested in playing famous people. I prefer to create characters. And I hope I have an exciting enough life that somebody might make a movie about that one day. I don't want to make movies about other people. I was once approached about playing Salvador Dali, which I thought would've been fun until I found out that he was proud of kicking a blind man across the street. So, I decided, I didn't want to play that guy. So, I think I'll just keep it the way it is.

Hollywood didn't know if I was an actor or a nut or if I was this crazy character I was playing. I had developed an image of being a little bit unusual, different and wild.

If I could have been a marine biologist I would have, but I didn't have that kind of intelligence. Numbers were never my strong point.

God bless the popcorn film. Especially movies where you can take the kids, because I remember looking forward to seeing these movies with my parents, and if I can give that back, I'm gonna do it.

I have eclectic tastes in the movies I want to do.

It may come as a surprise to people, but I'm actually quite boring and normal. What do I do? I read books. I drive my kid to school. I have lunch with my wife. I pick my kid up from school. I go home.

I've always had an interest in Louisiana, especially New Orleans.

My best takes are my first two takes.

I always see America as really belonging to the Native Americans. Even though I'm American, I still feel like a visitor in my own country.

I wanted to make an image for myself as an outlaw type. A kind of rock 'n' roll sensibility.

First of all the criteria that I have that goes into any career decision is whether or not I have the life experience, emotional resources to play the part truthfully or the imagination. Second, would be the director.