Nick Nolte
Success comes to you with luck and a lot of hard work, but it doesn't give you the right to be any better than anybody else.Collection: Success
Birth is violent, and out of that violence is our only chance of rebirth.Collection: Chance
Asking for forgiveness is just one of the most painful kind of experiences.Collection: Forgiveness
The difference between a murderer and myself is only that I choose not to do it. But I'm capable.
Acting is a bit of a substitute for life.
With 3D, all you're doing is trying to shock the audience; there's no value to the storytelling.
In America, the old are neglected.
Ageing's a difficult thing, moving closer to death, but it's okay. I've had a good time living, so I'm gonna have a good time dying.
Sometimes the writing can be so good that the actor doesn't really have to do anything.
I've been called 'the voice actor.'
I've been in movies where the movie doesn't come together but the role comes together, or the movie comes together but the role doesn't come together or something like that. Something misses. It's very difficult to make it hit on all cylinders - it's just very rare.
Obviously I had gone all through high school and into college, and you don't do that not knowing how to read.
Women are just more oriented toward feelings - and I don't mean that in a negative way. But with a male actor and a male director, the emotional exploration can only go so far. With a female director, you can end up exploring so many more depths.
Living in a small town, one of the keys to survival was your imagination.
When women talk about their feelings, they're not asking for solutions.
I never fought much. It just wasn't my thing. I suppose I could, but I've never got into fights. Not a real one.
I have a high degree of sensitivity, always have. I was very shy as a child. I don't know why that was.
How do I relax? Meditate, I guess. I quit golf. You twist your back and get all cranked up.
I can't ad-lib, or not for long.
I never caught on to being a bully.
No one wants to spend too long inside their own darkness.
No one consciously wants to destroy themselves. It always comes in a disguise. But then you have to deal with it some way.
If you're older you want to tell stories about the pool of human life and living and to communicate, not only to your age group but to do an age group that can begin to understand, that has enough experience of life far beyond the taste of life.
You give up your narcissism, your egotism. That's how you achieve chemistry.
If you get yourself in a hole, you dig yourself out.
You're playing a role, but you're still feeling it. You can walk away from it after 'Cut,' but if you're playing a sad or mixed-up person, it's hard to stay in that place for these longish period of times. You kind of have to check out.
Early on I decided that I was going to lie to the press. The best approach to talking about my personal life was to lie.
The truth was that, you know, there was no reason to send me to Shattuck Military School. But it was a disciplinarian school.
We're very reluctant to change, even though we know that all things change, and especially our relationships are just determined to change.
If you had a cancer on your skin and had it burned it off, you'd wash it and clean it every day.
Now, there is always a tremendous fear of science and progressing forward into areas of the unknown and it is a valid fear. Some of the genetic alterations of food are a little edgy.
I never felt comfortable in real life very well. It's always been an awkward kind of thing for me and so when I hit the stage I just sensed freedom. I sensed, 'Here's a place that I can have all the experiences of life and not feel uncomfortable about it.'
We truly have an ancient part of the brain that was about survival when we were prey but we seem to have gone past prey. We eat everything and nothing eats us.
You have to struggle a bit, hustle a little, and be willing to go bankrupt. Once you're willing to do that, everything opens up and you get the freedom. My joke is that next year, I'll make the first film that costs zero dollars.
If you feel you have a film that's valid, you stick your ass on the line.
When you are making the one you are doing, you think it is the greatest film going. And then you do another one and it is a great film.
I've made a lot of mistakes and I don't regret any of them. Sometimes that's the only way you learn.
We're really all alone. We can't ever get inside another person's spirit, and see the world they do. So we are alone in that sense. The only way we have to communicate feelings is through words.
The only people who ever called me a rebel were people who wanted me to do what they wanted.
I like working with writer-directors because you can solve problems right there.
All American males are failed athletes, and it was big time even if it was Little League. It meant a lot to you.
When I was a kid, my dad went to World War II. I didn't know him. I was born in '41.
We're social animals. We've got to get along together. It's in our nature. We're hardwired that way.
Peace, truthfully, is how you feel inside.
If I'm not a successful human being, who I am?
About the only thing that'll stay with you that you can trust all your life is your breath. Your breath will be there at the very last, because when it stops, you will stop.
I can't get any satiation. My brain is wired in such a way that I - in my research, I probably have a lack of D1 and D2 receptor sites. These are dopamine receptor sites, and satiation is a process that involves a cascade.
You work at a job, and you reach a certain level, and you're a little satisfied, and you keep going at it a little more, and you finally finish it. You go, 'Ah,' all your dopamine receptor sites are full. You're satiated.
Yes, you can get addicted to exercise.
I've never been all that comfortable in real life.