John Malkovich
Of course it's trivial, but then most things are.
Some directors expect you to do everything; write, be producer, psychiatrist. Some just want you to die in a tragic accident during the shooting so they can get the insurance.
There's a reason screens are only this thick.
You have to do things people see or you don't get to do anything.
I don't think my parents know what I do.
I wasn't really raised to be the type of person to have doubts.
I only have two rules for my newly born daughter: she will dress well and never have sex.
Where women are concerned, the rule is never to go out with anyone better dressed than you.
I still have a temper, I suppose.
I was a very good baseball player and football player as a kid.
I think people seem to sort of associate me with danger. And I don't see that at all.
My father was a very contradictory man.
I don't want a trillion-dollar empire to run.
I don't care what other people think. I don't think it matters.
We have a tendency to think everyone's idiotic and everyone's only doing something idiotic, and the world is controlled by a not-so-secret group of morons. There's great truth in that, I suppose, but then it's also not true.
People get up, they go to work, they have their lives, but you'll never see the headlines say, 'Six billion people got along rather well today.' You'll have the headline about the 30 people who shot each other.
I don't mind what I play, really.
I find it hard to pre-plan every element of everything I do. It's not my thing.
I like to direct movies, but I don't like to goof around for eight years talking about it.
Quite often - a lot of the work I had done had been extensively with women. Most especially in the theater, but also quite often in the movies. That has its own delights, and maybe pitfalls too.
I mean, anything that money can be made off will never be a problem to make, no matter what it is.
You know, I'm really not interested in someone telling me that something's good or bad.
'Secretariat' was such a magnificent animal, unbelievably beautiful and powerful. It's always nice to see something that close to perfection, a reason to celebrate.
I think 1973 was the nadir of fashion. When you watch the coverage from that era, you're struck by the astonishing ugliness of the clothes.
I probably have more female friends than any man I've ever met. What I like about them is that almost always they're generally mentally tougher, and they're better listeners, and they're more capable of surviving things. And most of the women that I like have a haunted quality - they're sort of like women who live in a haunted house all by themselves.Collection: Men
I wasn`t really raised to be the type of person to have doubts.Collection: Doubt
There are many, many benefits to being known for whatever it is you do. To deny that would be sort of asinine and vulgar.Collection: Would Be
For a while I wanted to be a professional baseball pitcher, and then I wanted to be a musician and then sometimes I think I'd like to start a store for gift-wrapping Christmas presents... But I feel I could do most things I set my mind to, except mechanical things, I'm not very good at that.Collection: Baseball
The ghosts you chase you never catch.Collection: Ghost
Art is not disposable. If you want it, you have to hold it and smell it and touch it and read the credits and enjoy it and put it on your wall.Collection: Art
And may the best of you - for it will only be the best of you, and even then only in the rarest and briefest moments - succeed in framing that most basic of questions, 'how do we live?'Collection: May
Some people die before their time so that others can live. It's a cornerstone of civilization.Collection: Civilization
It's funny - people think analysis or psychiatry is mad, and THEY go to CHURCH.Collection: Thinking
And if you say a word about this over the radio, the next wings you see will belong to the flies buzzing over your rotting corpse.Collection: Wings
Along with the good qualities, if someone isn't vulnerable I can't be around them to a certain extent. And I don't mean vulnerable to me or vulnerable to me in a sexual way. I just mean vulnerable, period.Collection: Mean
Reviews are destructive by their very nature.Collection: Reviews
To a certain extent in Hollywood you're a product, and your product is whatever sells the most, and whatever sells the most is whatever the public likes to see you do - if anything.Collection: Hollywood
There's no worse feeling in the world than realizing the play you've directed doesn't work.Collection: Play
I grew tired of religion some time not long after birth. I believe in people, I believe in humans, I believe in a car, but I don't believe something I can't have absolutely no evidence of for millenniums. And it's funny, people think analysis or psychiatry is mad, and they go to church.Collection: Believe
I don't really have a comprehension of being a public figure.Collection: Figures
Chicago my favourite American city. I'm very much a typical midwesterner, and I don't think the condition is curable.Collection: Thinking
I was a very good baseball player and football player as a kid, but my father always told me - occasionally while striking me - that I was much more interested in how I looked playing baseball or football than in actually playing. And I think there's great truth in that.Collection: Baseball
I like to direct movies, but I don't like to goof around for eight years talking about it. And it's pretty irritating to get a movie on. So to complicate it by having more irritation as a director, I don't really need it. And because I direct a great deal still, but in the theater, I kind of get that anyway. Which is not at all to say I would never do it again, or it would never happen again.Collection: Kind
With acting it's your neck up there in the end. And if you think the director can't help you it's one thing. But if you feel they're reining you in when they need to be giving you some rope, or vice versa, then I just don't tolerate that.Collection: Thinking
I know I have a fairly strong feminine side. I find myself really distanced from male behavior.Collection: Strong
I think probably when I was little, after my brother turned on me, I just had to play by myself or with myself. I've always done that. I think either it's some kind of weirdly competitive streak or it takes my mind off whatever's bothering me.Collection: Brother
It seems whenever I've had a method or what I perceived to be an intellectual groundwork of some sort - a kind of game plan - it's always been the most morbid failure.Collection: Games
One doesn't know if one had a happy childhood or not. I don't really know what it means.Collection: Mean
My father was a very contradictory man. I mean, most environmentalists in America in the 1950s - of which there were hardly any - were not... paratroopers. But my father was in the 82nd Airborne, it was just like that.Collection: Father