Alan Arkin Quotes

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

It's murder to doubt yourself in life. It took until I was 45 to get to that point. As hard as it is in your work, it's harder in your life. But it can be done.

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

Marriage requires searing honesty at all costs. I learned that from my third wife.

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.

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

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

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

'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.

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.

[The business is] more corporate and more formulaic and less experiential.

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

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.

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.

Two-thirds of American movies are extensions of commercials -- they tell you how to feel and they tell you how to think -- rather than letting you figure it out on your own.

Creativity means learning where the rules exist, and then breaking them! Saying, "It's better this way." But you have to know the rules in order to break them with any grace.

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.

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

I've always considered myself an actor, but I wasn't making a living as an actor.

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

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.

It's - everybody's looking at the bottom line all the time, and failure doesn't look good on the bottom line, and yet you don't learn anything without failing.

That's the privilege of old age: You don't have to remember.