Sean Penn Quotes

I don't believe there are climate skeptics. I think there are people who indulge in a culture of what can be reduced to Fox network thinking. That has nothing to do with the politics that apply to the protection of quality of life in any sense. It's like talking to a member of a cult.

Whatever one considers art to be, there is in many people a hunger to express themselves creatively and to feel authentic in doing that.

I think that people like the Howard Sterns, the Bill O'Reillys and to a lesser degree the bin Ladens of the world are making a horrible contribution.

I don't read newspapers too much , just because they tend to make me feel I have a political obligation that I think is a distraction from what my political offerings are going to be if I just make my movies.

In short form I'll say it was an approach to the family and to [author] Jon Krakauer that then led to me seeming to rise to the top of the heap of several filmmakers that were trying to get the rights. And by top of the heap I mean in terms of being somebody that was trusted to do it as they said they were going to attempt to do it and that this way of doing it would be something they would be willing to allow.

I don't have any particular excitement about working with any specific director or actor at this point.

When I go to bed at night and I think of humanity at large, I think of all those things.

I don't see life as an opportunity to see how far you can go in the pursuit of pain, although I think I've challenged it a bit.

Sense of self, and the way one shares it, is perhaps the most valuable and poetic gift in the arsenal of one's life and craft.

I'm not going to have a better day, a more magical moment than the first time I heard my daughter giggle.

It has nothing to do with the emotional demands of a role; I've done comedies that are as draining to me as any drama.

I have a regret that the entire discussion [with El Chapo]... ignores its purpose, which was to try to contribute to this discussion about the policy in the War on Drugs.

A SWAT team surrounded my house and came in every door. But it happened because on the day that we split up, Madonna developed a concern that if she were to return to the house, she would get a very severe haircut.

You need governance, but you also need a middle class, you need agriculture, they need to be able to export. I think that's probably the biggest issue, the job creation that could come with the kinds of things that Haiti has all the potential in the world to export.

I think we all have light and dark inside us.

The heartbreak that it might not happen wasn't something that I wanted to face with any more weight. Then, when I got the call to go ahead I never thought for a second as I was approaching it who I would get - that would come later. Again, I think the idea was that I now had the rights to make the movie and I can start writing it but if I have to wait another 10 years before I find an actor that's right for it, I'd be very happy to do that.

You try to do your best at what you're getting paid for.

It's pretty much rock-'n'-roll. I sit down and start feeling stuff and writing.

The thing that's very close in the process is writing and acting, not directing. Directing's very different.

I had a house burn down once, and everything in life burned except my family, and it was so liberating. I didn't have a bad moment about it. It sort of reinvigorated my interest in a lot of things. I wonder if there should be some kind of anarchy.

In between, I go broke because I seem to do movies where you're not paid a lot as an actor.

Bukowski said, "I know I'm good, so I like that people think I'm bad, because it gives me a dimension, effortlessly."

The greatest fear in my life was getting happy. I'm not so afraid of that anymore.

I do not believe in a simplistic and inflammatory view of good and evil. I believe this is a big world full of men, women, and children who struggle to eat, to love, to work, to protect their families, their beliefs, and their dreams.

I'm not going to recommend recklessness but somewhere just short of it - testing yourself and proactively pursuing a rite of passage has become necessary because in western developed countries we've become very comfort-addicted.

When I buy a Nikon camera, I have no tolerance for the instructions. I'm ready to make some mistakes using it and get some bad pictures back until I've figured it out for myself.

My greatest interest in it was certainly not to avoid those things that were going to be controversial about the family but the interest I had in the story was predominantly what he was pursuing and not as much what he was fleeing.

There is a kind of sense of truth and reconciliation that is non-formalized, but it's understood and accepted. Haitians are Haitians and there is an inherent loyalty that forgives an awful lot.

Sacrificing American soldiers or innocent civilians in an unprecedented preemptive attack on a separate sovereign nation may well prove itself a most temporary medicine.

It's a foreground of my feeling. That place moves me. And I don't mean my country; it's part of our shared natural world that happens to be particular to a sense of wherever my storytelling inclinations come from and my own history of kind of being a road rat and travelling.

If you can't count on your heart having some kind of unified response, you can't count on anything. You use your heart as a barometer for your movie's completeness.

Haiti, like any place, has its security problems; it has a great challenge in terms of establishing a kind of globally acceptable rule of law.

When you act in a film, you're inevitably surrounded by people you didn't choose, right down to the set painter. I like being able to pick the family I'm waking up to in the morning that's going to make this group effort to tell a story that applies to what's interesting to me at that stage in my life.

Fulfilling what you start is why you start something.

That on a romantic level, if you feel it about somebody and it's pure, it means that they do too.

The one thing you can count on in Hollywood - across the board - is cowardice.

Marriage ain't easy, but it's great most of the time.

I think if you want good things to happen for a country like Haiti, then you need to provide the circumstances where the Haitians can do that.

I like to believe that love is a reciprocal thing, that it can't really be felt, truly, by one.

On a movie, it's always better to stay invisible as much as you can to keep things calm. I like to whisper to my cameraman, I like to whisper to my actors, and whoever else I've gotten to whisper to.

I think life's an irrational obsession.

I think that I've still not been successful at playing the role of the retired actor, and I'd like to work on that.

Reputations are maintained by the outside world, and they're created by it, too, by and large. And they serve as a hell of a device for privacy, because the more people look for something that's not there, the less chance they have of violating who you are. It's like going out there with a mask on, without having to exercise your upper body to put it on.

At this stage, what would be rewarding would be for audiences to want to watch.

Yeah, I had actually tried to stop acting before I made Dead Man Walking.

My favorite thing to do is not act - it's that simple.

I've never really been one to get what they call stage fright so much.

There are a few directors around who I have some excitement about spending my $7 at the theatre watching their movies.