"At its best, life is completely unpredictable."
"I have this theory about words. There's a thousand ways to say "Pass the salt." It could mean, you know, "Can I have some salt?"; or it could mean, "I love you."; It could mean "I'm very annoyed with you"; really, the list could go on and on. Words are little bombs, and they have a lot of energy inside them."
"Bear costumes are funny... Bears as well."
"My hair was famous before I was."
"People always comment about my hair. It is unusual for a man my age to have so much."
"I don't need to be made to look evil. I can do that on my own."
"I make movies that nobody will see. I've made movies that even I have never seen."
"If you want to learn how to build a house, build a house. Don't ask anybody, just build a house."
"I can't imagine being somebody else. And anything I play, my reference is completely from the planet Showbusiness. I don't know anything about anybody else, people that I've known all my life - my family, my brothers - I don't know... I only know about me."
"I think that a good movie creates its own world, and that world needn't refer to anything that's real. If it's consistent, if it's entertaining, if it's interesting, it justifies its being there."
"I always think that in movies or on stage, two people can be talking to each other - the audience doesn't necessarily have to know what they're talking about, just so long as they know that you know what you're talking about."
"I used to be prettier than I am, but I think I look better now. I was a pretty boy. Particularly in my early movies. I don't like looking at them so much. There's a sort of pretty thing about me."
"I've enjoyed making movies for lots of different reasons. Sometimes, it was the other people. Sometimes, it was the fact that I was really good in it. Sometimes, it was the location. Sometimes, it was the paycheck. Sometimes, it can be lots of different things, or a lot of those things. Or there can be reasons why you'd like to avoid it the next time. Like the jungle. I've made a couple of movies in the jungle, and I don't want to go back to the jungle."
"Careers are not often as chosen as people think they are. People talk to me about my choices. I don't make choices, hardly. Things happen, and you say yes or no - usually 'yes', because it's always better to do something. What's the choice? Somebody will say, 'Don't do that part, you don't need to do that part.' And I'll say, 'Why not? What am I going to do? Sit around the house? I'd much rather go to work, and see actors, and have fun."
"I believe in saving money. I believe in having a house. I believe in keeping things clean. I believe in exercising," he says. "Slow and steady is a very good thing for me. It works for me."
"I have been in movies that I thought I wasn't very good in. I think, Chris, don't let your mouth hang open like that next time. Look at that facial tic. Don't walk in such a self-conscious way! But sometimes, I watch myself and I think that I am terrific - and that is really nice."
"I put aside an hour every day to go over that monologue again and again for months, and every time I got to the end of it, I would crack up." - On Pulp Fiction.
"I was already 35 years old, and I'd been in show business for 30-plus years, and suddenly there was this big movie and I was getting an Oscar, and this enormous thing happened," he says. "In Annie Hall, I played the strange brother who wanted to drive into oncoming cars. Immediately after that was The Deer Hunter, where I played this nice guy who shoots himself in the head. Something happened there. The fact that they came so close together, and they were both important movies, two big public things where I was simultaneously... "disturbed." That got the ball rolling for me in terms of being an actor."
"What I do has a lot to do with the words. My favorite thing is to have two scripts at the same time, and study them simultaneously in the kitchen. Go over the words, over and over, do them different ways, different inflections and rhythms. For me, rhythm is very important. I think we express ourselves as much with rhythm as with the words. It's not what you say, it's how you say it. I think it's very true. If you start to say your lines and it sounds right, usually I stick with that. If it sounds right, it probably is right. It's curious, how you're not collaborating with anyone at that point, and by the time you get there with other actors on the set, usually what you've done at home makes sense, and it's acceptable to everybody. The thing I have trouble with, because I'm so dependent on knowing my lines, is that if suddenly somebody says, "Here's a big speech. You're going to do that instead," I get lost. At that point, I understand why Marlon Brando loves cue cards." - On how he memorizes his lines and mentally prepares himself for each role.
"With stage fright you keep on doing it and eventually the fear goes away. If you stick around long enough you become very hard to intimidate. It is very difficult to make me nervous about working these days. There have been so many times when I thought I was finished, but it was not true - you just keep going. I am scared of sickness, pollution and crazy people but, work-wise, there is nothing to frighten me."