Peter O'Toole Quotes

If man ever comes to perfect equilibrium with the environment, we'll all be redundant, perhaps because you won't need art or letters.

If you can't do something willingly and joyfully, then don't do it.

Actors have to stay optimistic. The moment we start thinking otherwise, we're dead.

Most difficult thing in the world, to write a play. Do you know the story of Shaw at the Fabian society? H.G. Welles said "I'm terribly sorry I've missed the last five meetings, I've been terribly busy, I'm engaged in writing a scientific pamphlet on the effects of radioactivity in 1984 and I've produced a novel, and various pieces of science fiction to do, and I've had a bit of personal trouble, and I had my copy to bring out for the newspaper." Shaw leapt up and said, "I've not missed one meeting, and I have written a play!" hardest thing in the world. If it were easy they'd all be at it.

Always a bridesmaid never a bride my foot!

I put steam on the table by being an actor. That is how I live. The longer I live, the more expensive it becomes. So I do my work. And I can't be immensely picky. How many beautiful scripts come in one's lifetime? I have had more than anybody, practically.

And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.

It grieves us to produce work that is not perfect.

I can't stand light. I hate weather.

When I work with young people, I grab energy from them by the handsful.

I became a professional cricket teacher about 20 years ago. I had a son born to me when I was 50, and I thought, he needs someone to bowl to him.

Many years ago I sent an old, beloved jacket to a cleaner, the Sycamore Cleaners. It was a leather jacket covered in Guinness and blood and marmalade, one of those jobs... and it came back with a little note pinned to it, and on the note it said, 'It distresses us to return work which is not perfect.' So that will do for me. That can go on my tombstone.

When my father would come home from the track after a good day, the whole room would light up; it was fairyland. But when he lost, it was black. In our house, it was always either a wake ... or a wedding.

I found him perhaps the least terrifying man I've ever met in the theater—because at first glance I could see through him and he could see through me, and he knew that I knew that he knew. Look, love, I've been bullied all my life by bigger experts than Larry Olivier, I can assure you, and he's just got to get in line.

There's a remedy for everything except death.

I'm a working stiff, baby, just like everybody else.

Marriage is forever. It's like cement.

I will not be a common man. I will stir the smooth sands of monotony.

If you can't do something willingly and joyfully, then don't do it. If you give up drinking, don't go moaning about it; go back on the bottle. Do. As. Thou. Wilt.

It's very inconvenient because every time I finish, let's say, a chapter of a book, I think I'm going to ring Richard and then realize: Oh, Christ, I've buried him. I buried him last year.

If I'm not at my study by 10:00, 10:30, forget it, I can't write a word.

For me, life has either been a wake or a wedding.

We were doing it under the most extraordinary circumstances, but the first out of the tent in the morning would be David Lean. He said to me on the very first day of shooting, Pete, this is the beginning of a great adventure.

Do you not know that King Kong the first was just three foot six inches tall? He only came up to Faye Wray's belly button! If God could do the tricks that we can do he'd be a happy man!

It's my job, it's what I do, it's what I'm on earth to do and it's who I am.

George Eliot is my only steady girlfriend. We go to bed together every night.

We all had such larks. Yes, it was hard work but the friendships and the genuine respect we had for one another, that side I shall miss greatly. I've stopped acting, but I don't think I've finished using my voice. I could, and probably will, record the whole of Shakespeare's sonnets. They live at the side of my bed and are my constant companions.

He's a scoundrel, young Brad Pitt, who led me, his elderly colleague, astray more than once.

It distresses us to return work which is not perfect.

Question: How do you know you're God? Answer: Simple. When I pray to him, I find I'm talking to myself.

Irish women are always carrying water on their heads, and always carrying their husbands home from pubs. Such things are the greatest posture-builders in the world.

It was a mistake and I made the mistake because I was conservative and played safe. And that way lies failure." "Must do it... constantly go to the well... constantly try, try, try. Dare. Dare, Dare. Who dares wins.

I'm not working-class: I come from the criminal classes.

Not everyone can become a great artist; but a great artist *can* come from *anywhere*.

I am human, all too bloody human.

In the theater you can chain a blue-assed baboon in the stalls and with a good script, good actors, and a good set you'd have what is called a production. With the cinema someone has to know about lenses and fine things. I have no time for the "auteur de cinema." To me, it's meaningless.

If you do not surrender, I shall be forced to shoot you through the head with a rather large bullet.

Being sober for so many years is getting interesting.

I loved doing My Favorite Year, which was great fun, and The Ruling Class, which I made with all my chums.

Anything an artist does is to show ourselves as we really are, which is a complex thing. I don't think that one work of Philosophy or Art, or Letters, or Acting, or Middle Playing, or Tightrope Walking, or Flea Circuses has made mankind better, if by better you mean kinder, wiser, more tolerant of each other. One thing self knowledge. Knoticayton: know thyself.

Writing is a kind of performing art, and I can't sit down to write unless I'm dressed. I don't mean dressed in a suit, but dressed well and comfortably and I have to be shaved and bathed.

Pope Paul III was the greatest thief in the history of the church.

The only thing I've ever been interested in teaching anyone in life is cricket.

What I like is bottomless flattery.

A victory? What have we won? We've won a rock in the middle of a wasteland, on the shores of a poisoned sea.

The good parts are the people who don't make do. They're the interesting people. Lear doesn't make do.

The common denominator of all my friends is that they're dead.

My own favorite is something called Rogue Male.