Richard Gere Quotes

I haven't worked with people who are jealous or competitive. That's a particularly deadly attitude to have when you're working on a film.

America has never paid any attention to other people, so it's absurd for Bush to say that it's all in the best interests of the Iraqi people.

I'm not that tough; I'm not that smart. I need life telling me who I am, showing me my mind constantly. I wouldn't see it in a cave.

I have made plenty of mistakes. The key to life is to learn from them. I have been a little too introspective, but I think that stemmed from insecurity or shyness. I took a long time to grow up.

All of our energy should be in sacrifice and services. Suffering, at least.

The reality is, we can change. We can change ourselves. We can change our minds. We can change our hearts. And therefore the universe changes.

I have a lot of beautiful friends.

One of the joys of being an actor is that you're always learning new things. And I've been doing this since I was 19, so there's been a lot of new things I have learned for each part. I always assume that I can do it.

I would rather be loved than have money and all that other stuff.

In saving Tibet, you save the possibility that we are all brothers, sisters.

I'd bought a lot of really challenging, cutting-edge Joel-Peter Witkin photographs very early on. There were severed heads and amputated feet and hands in them - gruesome stuff. I had them all around the house, and if someone couldn't relate to it in some artistic way and instead just said "Yuck," then there probably wouldn't have been anywhere for us to go.

I tend to be a bit of a dreamer.

Maybe the Dalai Lama is the only person who is totally honest, and even with him, he's skillful not to hurt anybody. He's skillful.

I think movies probably are a mirror in some way so we can see ourselves in them.

Sometimes I'm kind of spacey. I'm like Ferdinand the bull, sniffing the daisy, not aware of time, of what's going on in the real world.

I'm less needy about needing to express myself through acting. I have many different lives outside of this that are extremely fulfilling.

I have to admit, a manicured look works for me.

When His Holiness won the Nobel Peace Prize, there was a quantum leap. He is not seen as solely a Tibetan anymore; he belongs to the world.

I've always maintained that all characters and all personalities are in all of us. The whole thing is available. You're not this or that, no one is.

There's really one character for every actor. The voyage is to find that one character.

When I am in Tibet, I am very happy. The Tibetans radiate. They literally send out light. The Dalai Lama's holiness generates love and compassion to every human being. He has committed himself to that. I haven't made that leap yet. I haven't given up self-aspiration. I still love making movies.

If you can see the terrorists as a relative who's dangerously sick and we have to give them medicine and the medicine is love and compassion. There's nothing better.

A lot of making a movie is the comfort level of the people. It's just feeling open. We need to get along. We have to know something about each other.

I can see the character in a photograph, in the way a guy stands or holds his hands, the way he buckles his belt. I fantasize a lot looking at photographs. I'm sure that doesn't work for many people.

[on editing of the films] There is always a question of time, and the director. I've worked with a lot of directors who don't mind my involvement. They appreciated it.

It was important for me to have a partner who was ballsy.

There is nothing real about film. Nothing. Even the light particles that project the film can't be proven to exist. Nothing is there.

People are always talking about freedom. Freedom to live a certain way, without being kicked around. Course the more you live a certain way, the less it feel like freedom. Me, uhm, I can change during the course of a day. I wake and I'm one person, when I go to sleep I know for certain I'm somebody else. I don't know who I am most of the time.

My life is pretty simple and normal.

(Sometimes when) someone's directing for the first time, they're afraid to include everyone - they have to prove they're the director.

I don't think that bravery is about skin. Bravery is about a willingness to show emotional need.

I'm younger than I once was. Internally. Less self-conscious. Less insecure.

I can’t remember that I was ever looking for anything. I was waiting for something to touch me. It’s like, I’ll be open to it, and see if it moves me. There has to be a "falling in love" moment.

Everyone responds to kindness.

I don't regret anything. Everything happens for a reason-it's part of the healing process. Life is a healing process.

Billions of people don't practice a religion at all.

There are times when telling lies are not a bad thing. It can be a compassionate thing. But to make it benign, you have to be aware of your compassionate reasons for telling that lie.

I've got a lot of opportunities, a lot of love in my life, a lot of things going for me. Still, it's not complete. I know this is not the whole thing. There's much more.

I've lived in New York when I've had nothing, and I've lived in New York when I had money, and New York changes radically depending on how much money you have. It's the texture of life.

From a Buddhist point of view, emotions are not real. As an actor, I manufacture emotions. They're a sense of play. But real life is the same. We're just not aware of it.

His Holiness [the Dalai Lama] has told me, urgently and repeatedly, that he thinks my photographs are crap. His exact words were, 'These photos are of poor quality. Why is there no sharp focus? There is no clarity!' I said, 'But your Holiness, it's Goyaesque.' And he said, 'No! It's out of focus!'

Relationships are like sharks. They've got to keep going into deeper, colder water, sometimes scarier, darker territories ... to stay alive.

I just had a device made that fits in your mouth and juts your jaw out like you have an underbite. It locks in that position to keep your throat passage open when you sleep. This is the sacrifice I make for my wife. It was either this device or me sleeping in the other room.

To read your own mind is to look at your self and read your soul. Hatred becomes love and that is the path I am working on

The idea that you're completing someone else in a marriage to me is death. That to me is a false start and most of us are usually taught that ... you've got to stand on your own. Then you can build something extraordinary.

I don't meet many people that are evil. I meet human beings who are flawed, who are mentally ill and have enormous problems, but I don't think I've ever met someone who was a totally dark energy that had no humanity or sense of love or affection for anything in their life. That's very rare.

The Dalai Lama said that he thinks mother's love is the best symbol for love and compassion, because it is totally disinterested.

We've had too many World AIDS Days.