Peter O'Toole
I will not be an ordinary man, because I have a right to be extraordinary.Collection: Men
Many years ago I sent an old, beloved jacket to a cleaner, the Sycamore Cleaners. It was a leather jacket covered in Guinness and blood and marmalade, one of those jobs... and it came back with a little note pinned to it, and on the note it said, 'It distresses us to return work which is not perfect.' So that will do for me. That can go on my tombstone.Collection: Jobs
I have no intention of uttering my last words on the stage. Room service and a couple of depraved young women will do me quite nicely for an exit.Collection: Couple
There may be honor among thieves, but there's none in politicians.Collection: Honor
I did quite enjoy the days when one went for a beer at one's local in Paris and woke up in Corsica.Collection: Beer
I do not choose to be a common man…it is my right to be uncommon—if I can…I seek opportunity—not security…I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed… to refuse to barter incentive for a dole… I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence, the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopias….Collection: Dream
Question: How do you know you're God? Answer: Simple. When I pray to him, I find I'm talking to myself.Collection: Atheist
George Eliot is my only steady girlfriend. We go to bed together every night.Collection: Girlfriend
There are only two things one has to bear in mind. One has to be credulous - able to believe - and skeptical - able to not believe, because if you are not skeptical, you will believe rubbish. If you are not credulous you will learn nothing and the only way to balance those two is to recognize the mystery of things.Collection: Believe
Everyone praises Sachin Tendulkar. He may be a genius in his own right but in my book, Rahul Dravid is the artist. Dravid's defence tactics, his strokes, his cuts, his grace are truly amazing. I'd like to meet the chap sometime and take my hat off to him.Collection: Book
If you can't do something willingly and joyfully, then don't do it. If you give up drinking, don't go moaning about it; go back on the bottle. Do. As. Thou. Wilt.Collection: Giving Up
A victory? What have we won? We've won a rock in the middle of a wasteland, on the shores of a poisoned sea.Collection: Sea
And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.Collection: Dream
Marriage is forever. It's like cement.Collection: Forever
There's a remedy for everything except death.Collection: Death
Not everyone can become a great artist; but a great artist *can* come from *anywhere*.Collection: Food
It was a mistake and I made the mistake because I was conservative and played safe. And that way lies failure." "Must do it... constantly go to the well... constantly try, try, try. Dare. Dare, Dare. Who dares wins.Collection: Inspirational
I can't stand light. I hate weather. My idea of heaven is moving from one smoke-filled room to another.Collection: Hate
Booze is the most outrageous of drugs which is why I chose it.Collection: Drug
He's a scoundrel, young Brad Pitt, who led me, his elderly colleague, astray more than once.Collection: Elderly
I'm not an actor, I'm a movie star!!!Collection: Stars
It grieves us to produce work that is not perfect.Collection: Work
People're artists they're doing something, taking a hunk of chaps, giving it some order, some form, and presenting it saying here is my little song and dance, my chaos.Collection: Song
It was around 1985 before I heard the news of President Kennedy's assassination.Collection: President Kennedy's Assassination
One time in the late '50s, when Peter Finch, Laurence Harvey, and I were all offered the same movie role - the assumption being that we weren't friends - we marched up to producer Dino De Laurentiis's door and declared in unison, 'We don't think we're suitable for the part.'Collection: Thinking
I love working with young people, which is to me a big kick.Collection: People
I wish to hazard my soul to opportunity.Collection: Opportunity
Anything an artist does is to show ourselves as we really are, which is a complex thing. I don't think that one work of Philosophy or Art, or Letters, or Acting, or Middle Playing, or Tightrope Walking, or Flea Circuses has made mankind better, if by better you mean kinder, wiser, more tolerant of each other. One thing self knowledge. Knoticayton: know thyself.Collection: Art
You talk about auteur de cinema having things in their heads and putting them all across, can you imagine Shakespeare writing screenplays?Collection: Writing
In the theater you can chain a blue-assed baboon in the stalls and with a good script, good actors, and a good set you'd have what is called a production. With the cinema someone has to know about lenses and fine things. I have no time for the "auteur de cinema." To me, it's meaningless.Collection: Meaningless
Do you not know that King Kong the first was just three foot six inches tall? He only came up to Faye Wray's belly button! If God could do the tricks that we can do he'd be a happy man!Collection: Kings
If you do not surrender, I shall be forced to shoot you through the head with a rather large bullet.Collection: Bullets
When my father would come home from the track after a good day, the whole room would light up; it was fairyland. But when he lost, it was black. In our house, it was always either a wake ... or a wedding.Collection: Father
If you cannot say what you mean, your majesty, you will never mean what you say and a gentleman should always mean what he says.Collection: Mean
I can't tell you about acting. You can develop all the skills, voice, gesture, movement, you can develop by exercise and practice but finally fundamentally it's mining from yourself, from your own personality, from what you know. If you can't know it you can have a good guess by people you know or books you've read.Collection: Book
Being sober for so many years is getting interesting.Collection: Food
I'm a professional and I'll do anything - a poetry reading, television, cinema, anything that allows me to act.Collection: Reading
It distresses us to return work which is not perfect.Collection: Perfect
I found him perhaps the least terrifying man I've ever met in the theater—because at first glance I could see through him and he could see through me, and he knew that I knew that he knew. Look, love, I've been bullied all my life by bigger experts than Larry Olivier, I can assure you, and he's just got to get in line.Collection: Men
What I like is bottomless flattery.Collection: Flattery
I am human, all too bloody human.Collection: Bloody
No one can take Jesus away from me.... There's no doubt there was a historical figure of tremendous importance, with enormous notions. Such as peace.Collection: Jesus
If man ever comes to perfect equilibrium with the environment, we'll all be redundant, perhaps because you won't need art or letters.Collection: Art
Acting has been described as farting about in disguise.Collection: Acting
When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself.Collection: Religious
The moment you start dividing thought and feeling, the ratio of sinitive from the intuitive, you're dead. There is no difference between emotion and thought. You can be unreasonable.Collection: Feelings
I'm a very physical actor. I use everything - toes, teeth, ears, everything. I don't simply mean physical in the sense of movement and vigour. I find myself remembering the shape of a scene by how I'm standing, what I'm doing.Collection: Mean
Most difficult thing in the world, to write a play. Do you know the story of Shaw at the Fabian society? H.G. Welles said "I'm terribly sorry I've missed the last five meetings, I've been terribly busy, I'm engaged in writing a scientific pamphlet on the effects of radioactivity in 1984 and I've produced a novel, and various pieces of science fiction to do, and I've had a bit of personal trouble, and I had my copy to bring out for the newspaper." Shaw leapt up and said, "I've not missed one meeting, and I have written a play!" hardest thing in the world. If it were easy they'd all be at it.Collection: Sorry
I'm not working-class: I come from the criminal classes.Collection: Class
I don't go for this auto-cannibalism. Very damaging.Collection: Psychology