Philip Seymour Hoffman Quotes

Directing is a really kind of amazing thing, because you're helping others and, in the middle of that, you have to worry about yourself.

Yeah, writers do hate writing.

Sometimes it's hard to say no. Ultimately, if you stick to your guns, you have the career that you want. Don't get me wrong. I love a good payday and I'll do films for fun. But ultimately my main goal is to do good work. If it doesn't pay well, so be it.

I would definitely say pleasure is not happiness. Because I think I kill pleasure. Like I take too much of it in, and therefore make it un-pleasurable, like too much coffee, and you're miserable.

People aren't going to throw the kind of money at certain people that they used to.

Being unemployed is not good for an actor. No, it isn't, no matter how unsuccessful you are. Because you always remember getting fired from all the restaurants. You remember that stuff very, very strongly.

I think directors should be confident in their leadership capabilities. I think directors should be confident in what they want to do.

Well, in the theater, I think you're actually more responsible for what is going on onstage as a director than you are in film.

If I'm directing actors, I learn about acting that way. If I'm acting, I learn about directing that way. Producing is just something that's come about because there's projects I find interesting that I would like to help get done.

My ideal weight is 205, actually.

I have three children and I think I'm happy when I'm with them and they're okay. When I see them enjoying each other in front of me, and then they let me enjoy them in turn. That brings a feeling which I would say is happiness.

There are characters in movies who I call 'film characters.' They don't exist in real life. They exist to play out a scenario. They can be in fantastic films, but they are not real characters; what happens to them is not lifelike.

Life's pretty funny when you're objectively on the outside looking at it.

I always thought I'd be a New York theater actor, riding my bicycle to rehearsal. That was all I ever wanted.

I've seen a lot of friends who have a lot of great projects, whether it's a script or a play or whatever, and it is a great project and they have great people involved, and they can't make it.

I don't know, I was young, I drank too much, you know, so I stopped. You know what I mean, it's not really complicated. I had no interest in drinking in moderation. And I still don't. Just because all that time's passed doesn't mean maybe it was just a phase. That's you know, that's who I am.

People used to be funny about approaching me, but now they seem to think I'm as sane as anyone who's done what I've done in movies can be.

I think you ultimately have to love who you're playing. You have to have that kind of feeling. You have to have passion for the person.

Ultimately, I think writing is a mixture of craft, inspiration, and being incredibly, courageously explorative with yourself - and being brutally honest, too.

There's something in the very small minutia of life that tells us something about the big, big picture that we see every day all over the place, and so I think the more specific and creative and revelatory you are in the micro, the more powerful the macro will be.

I had a father who was a traveling salesman.

Great talent admits shortcomings.

I've had to make the transition from sweeping in for 15 minutes, doing my stuff and clearing out, to carrying a movie for the duration - in a dress.

I got into plays in high school then I ended up going to college for it.

In film, you have to let go sometimes.

No one wants to be pretentious about what they do or take it seriously, because that is just weird.

I do feel like all the people I meet, all the people I'm in discussions with, if I'm working with somebody, I sense the same energy that everybody is suffering from the same predicament.

I don't want to repeat myself. I'm not going to play a guy like Allen in Happiness again any time soon because I did that and I don't want to tarnish or dilute that film by doing it again, maybe less well.

When you think about [Truman] Capote in the - was what he did exploitative of a person's life or exploitative of these murders? You look at our culture now, you look at celebrity and how it plays out in our culture now, and Capote was one of the great PR men of his time.

I think I would have drank myself to death, literally, if I didn't just stop, once and for all when I did. I am not ever going to preach to anyone about drugs or drinking. But, for me, when they were around, I had no self control.

There's things that you don't want to do and they keep haunting you and following you. Bennett Miller directed this project [Capote], who is a friend of mine since I was 16, and Danny Futterman wrote it, and he's also been a friend of mine since I was 16.

I didn't have any idea that I would be able to have a career in film.

I like so many different kinds of music just because all I did was listen to the radio as a kid.

My mother's a staunch feminist, so I grew up with very strong feminist messages. As a result, I battled her in my teenage years because my image of being a man was a deformed one.

My image of Jesus is someone who is exciting...Were he alive today, he would be causing havoc!

When you have a child, as anyone knows who has them, that's basically all you want to talk about.

I feel like I made a little bit of difference.

I've been reading a bunch of stuff lately - like Joseph Campbell - that has made me realize that people in our cultural, especially in the liberal community, often go in search of a foe. It's like we always need a hill to climb up or something to push against, or we feel as if we're not working constructively in the world.

One person's religion is another person's cult.

I like to come to the set with very strong ideas and strong opinions about how to do things. And I like also dealing with somebody who's like that.

The strange thing is I never thought I'd do films.

Study, find all the good teachers and study with them, get involved in acting to act, not to be famous or for the money. Do plays. It's not worth it if you are just in it for the money. You have to love it.

Film's hard when you don't have any relationship with the director at all and you just show up. Then you really are just a gun for hire.

If you're a human being walking the earth, you're weird, you're strange, you're psychologically challenged.

All over the world, young men and young women will always dream dreams.

I had insecurities and fears like everybody does, and I got over it. But I was interested in the parts of me that struggled with those things.

Good work is the only thing that would make me feel jealous or envious.

I have a fine level of recognition in the business and among the acting community now, so I consider myself one of the lucky ones. If I didn't think that, there would be something wrong with me. I'm grateful and thankful for what I've got.