Daniel Day-Lewis
It's a source of great sadness to me that my father died without having seen me do anything worthwhile. He was constantly having to make excuses for me.Collection: Sad
At some point in your life, if you're lucky, you get to design the way in which things evolve.Collection: Chance
When I've gone back to work, it's always with that sense of inevitability. That may be a complete delusion, but it's the one that I need to get out of bed and go about my business. That sense that I can't avoid this thing. I better just get on with it.Collection: Business
I think I have a strange relationship with time. I'm not really aware of that time passing. I don't feel that I'm wasteful with time. But I'm not aware of it passing.Collection: Relationship
Ireland was a place for the renewal of hope and I still see it like that.Collection: Hope
I suppose I have a highly developed capacity for self-delusion, so it's no problem for me to believe that I'm somebody else!
I like things that make you grit your teeth. I like tucking my chin in and sort of leading into the storm. I like that feeling. I like it a lot.
I like to cook things very slowly.
I see a lot of movies. I love films as a spectator, and that's never obscured by the part of me that does the work myself. I just love going to the movies.
A voice is such a deep, personal reflection of character.
Shoes are strange things. If you take your shoes off in a situation in which you're vulnerable, you'll feel 10 times more vulnerable.
How people are around a director, it really does affect everything, every detail of the life of the movie.
To people who don't know me I'm defined by a number of things that people know about me that are entirely untrue.
Quite honestly, if I were doing work related to a living being or historical being where there was visual or audio recordings available, I would find that extremely difficult because I don't know how you would avoid the process of mimicry. And mimicry, to me at any rate, is a very dull prospect.
I have always been intrigued by these lives I have never experienced.
There's nothing worse than finding yourself in a situation, a very demanding piece of work, and knowing that you're not a true ally to the person who's in charge of all that.
I love to sit and watch people. I love to sit and listen to people.
I broke things to get attention.
I would wish for any one of my colleagues to have the experience of working with Martin Scorsese once in their lifetime.
If people take an interest in you and they think there's half a chance, they might hang on. It's dreadful.
I'm a warrior when it comes to pursuing roles.
Perhaps I'm particularly serious, because I'm not unaware of the potential absurdity of what I'm doing.
I didn't like the idea of being foolish, but I learned pretty soon that it was essential to fail and be foolish.
I depleted myself to the point where I had nothing left.
I just knew at an early time in my life how important privacy was.
When I was younger, I made some decisions that I shouldn't have. And, in hindsight, I've almost always been wrong when I haven't listened to myself.
If you have a certain wildness of spirit, a cabinet maker's workshop is not the place to express it.
In all fields of creativity you see the result of work that has become habit. Where the creative impulse has become flaccid or has died out altogether, and yet because it is our work and our life we continue to do it.
If you remain unsettled by a piece of writing, it means you are not watching the story from the outside; you've already taken a step towards it.
I don't feel my son should pay the price for what I do.
I come from not just a household but a country where the finesse of language, well-balanced sentence, structure, syntax, these things are driven into us, and my parents, bless them, are great custodians of the English language.
You can never fully put your finger on the reason why you're suddenly, inexplicably compelled to explore one life as opposed to another.
Many years ago, I really didn't know where the next work was coming from.
There must've been some part of me that wanted to make my mark. But there was never a defining moment.
The whole thing of weight, I guess it's because there is a wider fascination we all have with weight.
My curiosity sustains me for the period of the shoot.
Making a film, setting it up and getting it cast and getting it together, is not an easy thing.
The last time I was on a small set would've been probably My Left Foot.
I'm very often still very much alive for that other being and that other world long after the film is finished.
I was a savage for so many years of my life. There was some seed of determination in me that I was not conscious of. I was mostly consciously getting into trouble and drunk.
I think some actors thrive on working at a much greater pace than I do.
I suppose the place where I live is fairly remote, it would seem remote to some people.
I made the film in spite of Harvey, not because of Harvey.
I hate wasting people's time.
I find it easier to work when it's quiet.
I feel less often compelled to do the work than I was in the past.
I don't know what impression you might have of the way I live. I live in a quiet place. I do not live as a hermit, though other people would prefer it if I did.
Everybody has to know for themselves what they're capable of.
At a certain age it just became apparent to me that this was probably the work that I would have to do.
Being at the centre of a film is a burden one takes on with innocence the first time. Thereafter, you take it on with trepidation.