Harry Dean Stanton
I've avoided success artfully.
I liked 'Repo Man.' Satire.
Do nothing. Do nothing. Let it happen. Don't try.
I like to watch 'Paris, Texas,' but I have no desire to see it. I did it.
It's just so frustrating when you're in a supporting role because you only get to express a part of yourself.
To put it mildly, I was just a very late bloomer.
I know I've got the ability to bring a sense of menace to the screen. I have that specific competence, and it's generally kept me working.
I could have been a writer.
I had to decide if I wanted to be a singer or an actor. I was always singing. I thought if I could be an actor, I could do all of it.
I just want to say, good night, sweet prince, may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
Everything changes every day.
My feeling or philosophy is closer to Taoism and Zen Buddhism, 'cause it's the most practical.
I'm just dealing with what's happening, with what is. Joy, happiness, good, bad, all those terms are meaningless to me.
I do all the classics, like Dylan, Kristofferson, Jimmy Reed, Mexican mariachi songs, some jazz songs from the '30s. Cole Porter's 'Begin the Beguine,' that's one of my favorites.
I've always been a searcher - you know, a hunter. I'm certainly not the only one. They say actors shouldn't get political and everything, but you can't separate yourself. You can't disconnect yourself from anything.
I do the same series of five exercises 21 times each day - an ancient Tibetan practice that stimulates your chakras.
I was offered a series by John Carpenter after I did the movie 'Christine,' and I would've been a leading man after that. I would have played a private investigator. And I was offered a great deal - I would be involved in the direction, casting, everything, and whatever. It was whatever an actor wants, and I didn't take it.
I like to do nothing.
There is no self.
There is no answer. That's what Buddhism says. The Void, oblivion, no answer. To be in that state is an enlightened state.
I've got a pretty iconoclastic attitude about all institutions myself. And I just think the church was corrupted right after Christ was killed.
You get older. In the end, you end up accepting everything in your life - suffering, horror, love, loss, hate - all of it.
'Paris, Texas' is the first film that I've totally cared about, the first movie I totally wanted to do - and that after 27 years that I considered my prison term.
Speech lessons probably did more for my singing voice - they teach you breathing, resonance.
'Pretty In Pink' was a huge hit for me.
'Alien?' Oh, yeah. I still get fanmail almost every week, pictures from all over the world on that movie. That's one of the most popular films I've done.
I really liked the Mariachi singing in Westerns.
I don't believe in singing lessons. You can sing or you can't.
I think any performing artist can do films, or, as a matter of fact, anybody out there in the street can be a film actor with no experience whatsoever if you've got a good director.
I sing and play guitar and harmonica. I've been doing it for a long time.
I'd love to meet Gandhi. And Christ. I'm sure he'd be interesting. And a lot different than a lot of people would think.
I play myself all the time, on camera and off. What else can I do?
But I'm not imaginative. I couldn't look into the future, like Star Wars or Robots or anything like that.
I know little stories that happen to people around me, and I can repeat that in a way that has some color.
California is full of Mexican culture and Mexican music.
Heisenberg, Max Plank and Einstein, they all agreed that science could not solve the mystery of the universe.
I have a good ear for languages.
I like to stay home and watch television. The Game Show channel, mostly.
I took speech training. I took a few voice lessons in college.
I've never been ambitious about recording.
I've received a lot of compliments. People come right up to me on the street. They recognize me.
The band I've played with for 10 or 12 years now, we've been all over, but we mostly play in LA.
I realized early on that if I became an actor, I could play a writer and a sculptor and a painter and be all the things you just don't have time to be in your lifetime. I could get to learn about all of them.
I was in a movie called 'Twister,' and in it, I had to hit a golf ball off of a roof with a driving wood. The guy who owned the place where we shot showed me how to do it, and I hit the ball about 150 yards.
I'm very fortunate. I don't think anyone should have a job that they don't really enjoy.
I change every day. I'm still changing.
I've never seen a Western that was really truthful. Most are just morality plays. Good guys and bad guys - and the good guys always win, whereas in reality, most of the sheriffs were as bad as the gangsters they were after.
I'm big into Eastern concepts. The horror of life, the love of children, the whole phantasmagoria - it's all meaningless. Be still, and see what happens. All of life unfolds perfectly. You have to get beyond consciousness.
I watch television. Game shows - I hate the hosts and the people on them, and I love the questions and the answers.