Nicolas Cage Quotes

I think the paparazzi might have chased me out of Los Angeles.

I think on some level, all of us have a little bit of belief in the possibility of different energies and forces and things like that. Otherwise, we wouldn't be afraid of them. Or there wouldn't be so many movies about them.

When you're playing a spirit from another dimension, you really can do anything and get as abstract as you want and still have a context that will work within the movie. I wanted Ghost Rider to move in a way where it would be like a bad dream. I thought about cobra snakes, and the way that they will show you their backs and sway in a rhythmic motion and almost lull you to sleep before suddenly attacking. Well, I put that into the movie. And I decided to move my head in the jerky way a praying mantis does. So, I did all these things to give the movie a feeling of otherness.

I try not to be proud. I try to actively attack pride.

You can't make your choices based on what critics think. You have to make your choices based on what's honest for you.

I went to New Orleans for the first time for Wild at Heart, and I kept going back to make more movies there. I've become very close to the city and part of me does feel like a New Orleanian.

I will promise you that if I can give you two good scenes -- which is what I always try to do in every movie -- then I feel like I'm doing my job.

I love it all. I don't want to go through my career with one hand tied behind my back. I love making kids happy. I love the midnight audience. I like intense dramas. And I like high-adrenaline action films.

My direction as a person working in film has been to never get comfortable with anything I was doing. At the time that I decided to do action films, people were telling me, "Well, you can't do it. You're not that type. It's not going to work." And so obviously that made me think, "Well, that's not comfortable. Maybe I should try it. What can I do with it?" So I did that, and I'm glad I did it. I'll probably do it again, and I did other kinds of things that seemed like challenges for me, because I like being on the high wire.

I find it inspiring and I always think when I'm working on something new, whether it's a new kind of character or a new kind of story or new kind of camera, it gets my creative wheels spinning.

One of the first signs of being depressed is that you lose interest in things. That's why I think it is important to stay passionate.

I find children inspiring. The way they look at the world. The magical world they live in, to me, is inspiring.

Idris Elba is a grand actor. He's very larger than life; he's bigger than life.

I would love to work with Tim Burton. I think we would be very good together.

I try to keep my characters raising more questions than giving answers. I don't want to leave too much on the table. I want you to have your connection and your secret understanding of the character.

I don't find the same things funny that many other people seem to find funny. I don't really respond to sex jokes and things like that, and some of my friends look at me and go, "Come on, Nic, that was my best joke. Why aren't you laughing?" I go, "I really don't know why I'm not laughing. I'm sort of out of sync with it." So I'd have to find something that was really about weird human behavior for me to laugh.

When I was eight, I would look at the cover of the 'Ghost Rider' comic book in my little home in Long Beach, California, and I couldn't get my head around how something that scary could also be good. To me it was my first philosophical awakening - 'How is this possible, this duality?'

It's a family that's loaded with grudges and passion. We come from a long line of robbers and highwaymen in Italy, you know. Killers, even.

And what I like about it is it makes me happy and I think it makes a lot of people happy to go to the movies and to not think about the problems of the day or the problems of tomorrow or the yesterday and just go on for the ride and have the fun of losing oneself in a fantasy.

I have a love-hate relationship with New Orleans, which is the strongest sort of relationship. I've had some extraordinary, beautiful, poetic experiences in this city and I've had some terrible experiences in this city. I'm drawn to New Orleans, in many ways feel I grew up in New Orleans, even though I'm from the West.

Mel Blanc is a hero because of what he could do with his voice for all the Looney Tunes, the Warner Brothers cartoons, to be the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig. To me, he's a great actor.

I like to work with young people, because young people haven’t had their dreams kicked out of them yet. Full of confidence, and imagination, and vision, and when they score that all gets empowered.

Guy Pearce is very precise and clear about understanding the rhythm and the music of a scene.

Tattoos to me are the outward symbol of the inward change within my soul.

Feel like real time unfolding. It's going to smack of reality and feel as real as it can ... The buildings themselves aren't (shown) ... The movie's about what happened amongst this handful of men when the buildings came down.

Movies work, in my opinion, on the best level when they're more enigmatic, when we don't say it's this or that and where it raises more questions than answers.

I believe that everybody has the right to believe what they want to believe and to knock somebody's faith and religion is foolish, whatever it may be - Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism.

I'm a seeker. I'm very much a believer in science. But I do think there are times when science and mysticism intersect.

We do see Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi and Chow Yun Fat, but it's very rare to see the Chinese male actor in Hollywood movies, which is something I take great umbrage with. You know, my son is Asian. He may want to direct one day; he may want to be an actor like his father - and I want that to be open to him.

I do enjoy animated movies.

I never studied dance, but if you look at 'Wild At Heart,' my mother saw that movie and said, 'You are a dancer. Look at how you're moving: all that strange energy is like modern dance.'

I would like to find a way to embrace what Led Zeppelin did, in filmmaking.

I came out of independent film, that's my roots. I used my independent film as a laboratory, and used what I could discover in that laboratory.

I love all animals. I have a fascination with fish, birds, whales - sentient life - insects, reptiles.

When I'm in England, I know I'm a visitor, but being a white man in England with ancestry that's German and Italian, I have a history with the Romans and the Saxons. I feel some connection and ancestry here, as weird as that sounds.

I'm very impressed with 'Drive.'

To begin... To begin... How to start? I'm hungry. I should get coffee. Coffee would help me think. Maybe I should write something first, then reward myself with coffee. Coffee and a muffin. Okay, so I need to establish the themes. Maybe a banana-nut. That's a good muffin.

I happen to still like really dark, dramatic, fractured characters. They're the reason I got into movies.

If you get a chance, whenever you're traveling, do go to the local boutique comic book shop and don't buy your comics online 'cause those guys are going to go extinct, in a minute here, and we want to be able to have those experiences with our kids.

I have dogs, and it's no secret that I find reptiles interesting, but the thing about reptiles is that they really just wanna be left alone, and I understand them. It's, 'Don't pick me up, stop holding me, don't look at me, just leave me alone.' I have to admit, sometimes I feel like that.

I actually enjoy working with green screen, because I can imagine all that stuff happening, and I really cut my teeth on a movie I made called "Adaptation" where I had to imagine four-page dialogue scenes with my twin brother, who was nothing more than a tennis ball and a gas stand.

Without impending on your own personal choice, there are going to be those that wear the hat of religion and those that wear the hat of science. I still don't really understand why they can't wear both hats, because personally, I think that they go beautifully together.

I am not a demon. I am a lizard, a shark, a heat-seeking panther. I want to be Bob Denver on acid playing the accordion.

I like the idea of being involved in pictures that can entertain the entire family and can stimulate youngsters into looking at picture books. There's nothing wrong with that.

I came out of independent film, that's my roots.

I love England - it's no secret.

Some things are true whether you believe in them or not.

I see myself as a student. I would never call myself a master or a maestro. If you take the path of the student, that means you have to try a little bit of everything in hopes that you're going to learn something or strike some kind of new note, expression in the process. I'm not going for grades; I'm going for an education. I'm going to continue experimenting and trying new things to try to evolve and learn.