Jim Carrey // "My father could have been a great comedian but he didn't believe that that was possible for him, and so he made a conservative choice. Instead, he got a safe job as an accountant and when I was 12 years old he was let go from that safe job, and our family had to do whatever we could to survive. I learned many great lessons from my father. Not the least of which was that: You can fail at what you don't want. So you might as well take a chance on doing what you love."
Nina Simone // "What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did."
James Baldwin // "You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It...taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive... An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else can tell, what it is like to be alive."
Joni Mitchell // "This is what I think about people: They want, they want and they want. However, if I actually gave them what they wanted, then they'd just get sick of it... People get sick of your name. People get sick of your face. It doesn't matter what you do. Recognizing those times, I would go even further out. I figured they're going to get me anyway, so I may as well stretch out."
Albert Camus // "No man can say what he is. But sometimes he can say what he is not."
Bill Murray // "It pays off when you're in an elevator and people are uncomfortable, you can just say, 'That's a beautiful scarf.' It's just thinking about making someone else feel comfortable...we're all vibrating together. If I can make yours just a little bit groovier, it'll affect me. It comes back, somehow."
Alfred Hitchcock // "There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it."
Lauren Bacall // "You don’t always win your battles, but it’s good to know you fought."
Wes Anderson // "I have a way of filming things and staging them and designing sets. There were times when I thought I should change my approach, but in fact, this is what I like to do. It's sort of like my handwriting... And somewhere along the way, I think I've made the decision: I'm going to write in my own handwriting."
Charles Bukowski // "My life has hardly been pretty...the hospitals, the jails, the jobs, the women, the drinking. Some of my critics claim that I have deliberately inflicted myself with pain. I wish that some of my critics had been along with me for the journey. It’s true that I haven't always chosen easy situations but that's a hell of a long ways from saying that I leaped into the oven and locked the door. Hangover, the electric needle, bad booze, bad women, madness in small rooms, starvation in the land of plenty, god knows how I got so ugly, I guess it just comes from being slugged and slugged again and again, and not going down, still trying to think, to feel, still trying to put the butterfly back together again…it’s written a map on my face that nobody would ever want to hang on their wall. Sometimes I’ll see myself somewhere…suddenly…say in a large mirror in a supermarket…eyes like little mean bugs…face scarred, twisted, yes, I look insane, demented, what a mess…spilled vomit of skin…yet, when I see the 'handsome' men I think, my god my god, I’m glad I’m not them."
Benicio del Toro // "If you’re in a scene and you don’t know what you’re gonna do, don’t do anything...don’t do anything. Now it’s tricky not to do anything. It’s not as easy as not doing anything. There’s some weight that you have to find...not doing anything but being there. You gotta train your ear. You gotta listen. I’ve been in many scenes where I don’t say a word, and there’s other actors talking, and one thing that helped me ground myself was really listening to what they’re talking about. And then it looked like I was doing something but I wasn’t doing anything. I was listening."
David Lynch // "You don't know yourself by talking to yourself or looking in the mirror. You know yourself by diving in and experiencing the self."