Alan Arkin Quotes

There's a familiarity that sometimes shocks and annoys the hell out of me. People want a relationship with you that they haven't earned.

'Catch-22' was a huge failure, and it rubbed off on everybody connected to it. I had a bunch of lean years where I had to do things, a lot of which I wasn't wildly enthusiastic about.

I played guitar. I've always considered myself an actor, but I wasn't making a living as an actor. So I was in a couple of folk groups that managed to keep me in underwear and burritos.

You know what Andy Warhol's sole contribution to this country has been? He made Campbell's Soup a household word.

If I'm doing a fake movie, it's gonna be a fake hit.

Every physicist knows that things connect with each other. To isolate things is not the way the universe works - winning best actor is arbitrary.

No matter how much time you spend reading books or following your intuition, you're gonna screw it up. Fifty times. You can't do parenting right.

I don't think it does the audience any good to know what I do to prepare. It keeps it more of a surprise. I don't feel like it has to be a mystery.

I don't believe in competitions between artists. This is insane. Who has the authority to say someone is better?

My favorite kind of film is serious comedy. Comedy with serious underpinning.

I read somewhere that some people believe that the entire universe is a matrix of living thought. And I said, "Man if that's not a definition of God, I don't know what is.

No matter what you do or where you are, you're going to be missing out on something.

I gotta keep busy. I'm not happy unless I'm working on two, three things.

All I can say is if the part doesn't delight me in some way, or I can't feel any compassion for it, I just can't do it.

Things are never going to turn out how you think they will.

Truth is always unfolding. It's not an absolute.

Either you're growing or you're decaying; there's no middle ground. If you're standing still, you're decaying.

I know that if I can't move people, then I have no business being an actor.