- The average celebrity meets, in one year, ten times the amount of people that the average person meets in his entire life.
- [on the $5 million he earned for A Few Good Men (1992)] It was one of the few times when it was money well spent.
- [regarding Terms of Endearment (1983)] When I read the part, I knew I'd win the Oscar for it.
- You only lie to two people in your life: your girlfriend and the police.
- If you get an impulse in a scene, no matter how wrong it seems, follow the impulse. It might be something and if it ain't - take two!
- A star on a movie set is like a time bomb. That bomb has got to be defused so people can approach it without fear.
- [on the birth of his son after having had two daughters] I finally got it right.
- When I come up against a director who has a concept that I don't agree with, or maybe I just haven't thought of it or whatever, I'd be more prone to go with them than my own because I want to be out of control as an actor, I want them to have the control, otherwise it's going to become predictably my work, and that's not fun.
- I only take viagra when I am with more than one woman.
- I'm not a raver anymore, all good things must come to an end.
- I was particularly proud of my performance as the Joker. I considered it a piece of pop art.
- My motto is: more good times.
- A question you always ask in acting is, Where were you going if this scene didn't interrupt the movements of the character?
- "You're new here, aren't you?" Nicholson, who rarely is seen in public without his sunglasses, replied when asked by a photographer to take off his glasses for a photo.
- There's a period just before you start a movie when you start thinking, I don't know what in the world I'm going to do. It's free-floating anxiety. In my case, though, this is over by lunch the first day of shooting.
- Every director implored me, "Jack, can't you talk a little bit faster?" It was like a hot button for me and I would become hateful. So when Roman started to say it, I began and he said, "Jack, this movie is 100-and-something pages long. To have a movie that is screen able, you'll have to talk a little faster". [Roman Polanski directed him in Chinatown (1974)].
- [on turning down the role played by Robert Redford in The Sting (1973)] I liked the period, the whole project and I knew it would be commercial. But at the time, I needed to put my energies into a movie that really needed them. I needed to take a risk.
- [on being nominated for an Oscar for the third time for The Last Detail (1973)] The first time I was up for an Oscar, I thought I would win it. But I didn't have as sharp a view as I do now. The second time... I expected to lose, and deservedly lose, to George C. Scott. But even getting a nomination blows my mind. I'd love to win but now that I've had several good performances that people at large have liked, it becomes harder to excite them. And familiarity breeds contempt.
- So I mean it when I say that if you can't appreciate Brando, I wouldn't know how to talk to you. If there's anything obvious in life, this is it. Other actors don't go around discussing who is the best actor in the world, because it's obvious - Marlon Brando is.
- I don't want people to know what I'm actually like. It's not good for an actor.
- I'm very contra my constituency in terms of abortion because I'm positively against it. I don't have the right to any other view. My only emotion is gratitude, literally, for my life.
- [on Stanley Kubrick] Just because you're a perfectionist doesn't mean you're perfect.
- Beer, it's the best damn drink in the world.
- (1992) I don't believe in God now. I can still work up an envy for someone who has a faith. I can see how that could be a deeply soothing experience.
- As an actor, I have no desire for anybody to understand my past work. Period.
- (1996) I just wish every film I liked wasn't either foreign or made in America but with such terrible difficulty. This is the worst period ever for trying to do interesting work.
- With my sunglasses on, I'm Jack Nicholson. Without them, I'm fat and seventy.
- I would be so happy if I didn't smoke, for a lot of reasons. I can't believe that I can't break the habit. I don't want to be lying around, dying in Cedar's Sinai Hospital and thinking that I was as stupid enough, a man who is as petrified of dying as I am, to have done it to myself. I'm a real fraidy-cat about mortality.
- The thing I like about The Joker is that his sense of humor is completely tasteless.
- We were moving to a freer society before AIDS. Most people who investigated this knew that if you were not shooting up or getting f***ed in the heinie, you were as likely to get AIDS as you were to have a safe fall on your head while walking down Wilshire Boulevard. But you could not proselytize this view. The facts were almost useless. You couldn't give a woman the facts and have her respond, 'Oh, all right.'
- I think it is very unattractive for me to be seen fawning over little, tiny girls. I didn't feel that for a long time but now I do. If I could slip them out the back entrance wrapped in a blanket, that's a different story. (February 2004)
- [on Jessica Lange] She is like a delicate fawn, but crossed with a Buick.
- I've grown out of talking like I know something when I don't.
- Explaining his controversial remarks on the death of Heath Ledger: What I actually said was, 'I warned them.' I had a bad experience with those sleeping pills that Ledger apparently took. I took one of these pills and had just gone to sleep when I had a phone call to go to an emergency at a friend's house. I jumped up, went outside and some time later woke up on the driveway. It sounds amusing but I live in the mountains and it could've been worse. I didn't know Heath Ledger, but I know those pills.
- Star quality is if you're on stage and a cat walks on and they still watch you.
- It's not so nice when you are 71 and looking for some action. I feel uncomfortable doing it in the limelight - so from now on I'll do it when it's right. Happily, when it comes to girls hitting on me, I'm not undernourished.
- [When asked would he see The Dark Knight (2008)] I'm not inclined to watch it because of what I said. But if it's a good movie, I'll catch up with it somewhere. I don't think they ever really captured Tim Burton's spirit [since he stopped being involved]. They kind of drove the franchise into the ground. Tim Burton's a genius. He had the right take on it. That's why I did the movie. I did the movie based on a single conversation with him. We both come from the cartoon world originally. We had similar ideas. Tim said the Joker should have a humorous dark side to him. Burton is one of the great movie makers. I think the world of him. He's the most unassuming man. And he doesn't feel pressure. That's what I love about him. Once he's in there, he's smiling making the movie. That's it!
- I come from the Lynchs of Sligo (Ireland). You know, I went there, but I looked in the phone book and there are nine million Lynchs in Sligo.
- There's no one before or since like Marlon Brando. The gift was enormous and flawless, like [Pablo Picasso]. Brando was a genius who was the beginning and end of his own revolution. You didn't rush him. He had a tremendous gift just in his stillness. I was in high school when I saw The Wild One (1953). He changed my life forever... a monumental artist. There was no way to follow in his footsteps. He was just too large and just too far out of sight. He truly shook the world, and his influence will be there long into the future.
- [on Stanley Kubrick] Everyone pretty much acknowledges him as The Man, and I still think that underrates him.
- I was talking to Sean Penn on the phone today. I told him it was interesting that they managed to leave me off this long list of Method actors they'd published in some article. I told him, "I'm still fooling them!" I consider it an accomplishment. Because there's probably no one who understands Method acting better academically than I do, or actually uses it more in his work. But it's funny -- nobody really sees that. It's perception versus reality, I suppose.
- For a long time, I was afraid to be alone. I had to learn how to be alone. And there are still times when I think, Uh-oh! I gotta talk to somebody here or I'm gonna go crazy! But I like to be alone. Now I do. I really do. There's a big luxury in solitude.
- After September 11, I held my tongue. All of the public positions had been taken -- for, against, good, evil. I had nothing more to add. So I thought, Bring in the clowns, you know what I mean? That's why I've done a coupla years' worth of comedies.
- [on On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970)] All I am in the movie is bad.
- [on The Passenger (1975)] Antonioni says he just tries to make something beautiful because truth is beautiful and beauty is truth. That's what I'm really into. I like making beautiful things. Maybe that sounds ridiculous but when I choose a film to do, it's because it interests me in that way rather than any other. I look at every character I play on the screen as being completely separate. You can say most of them are outsiders, but it's hard today to think of any character in a film who isn't an outsider. All I ask is that they relate to the truth in some way.
- I hate giving advice, because people won't take it.
- [on his signature glasses] They're prescription. That's why I wear them. A long time ago, the Middle American in me may have thought it was a bit affected maybe. But the light is very strong in southern California. And once you've experienced negative territory in public life, you begin to accept the notion of shields. I am a person who is trained to look other people in the eye. But I can't look into the eyes of everyone who wants to look into mine; I can't emotionally cope with that kind of volume. Sunglasses are part of my armor.
- I love discourse. I'm dying to have my mind changed. I'm probably the only liberal who read Treason, by Ann Coulter. I want to know, you understand? I like listening to everybody. This to me is the elixir of life.
- I'm the age where we didn't have television as kids. So when I saw my nieces and nephews watching Howdy Doody (1954), Kukla, Fran and Ollie (1969), and so forth, I thought the world had gone mad.
- I always hesitate to say things like this in interviews because they tend to come back to haunt you, but if I were an Arab-American, I would insist on being profiled. This is not the time for civil rights. There are larger issues for Americans.
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