Christopher Quotes

In a normal family, surprise means presents, cake and a party. My family, surprise means homelessness, abandonment and destruction of private property. Sometimes we have cake. We're not losers.

So what if your custom car shop tanks and you've gotta take a crappy job at an auto parts store, dealing with ignorant, pushy people. I'm okay with that, 'cause I'm an ignorant, pushy people person.

My parents got divorced. Early and ugly. My mum was nuts so I lived with my dad. We used to play a father/son games. Pin the blame on me, rock, paper, get me another beer, casino night.

We kinda hated sitcoms when we sat down and talked about this. We wanted to do something that was in the sitcom vain but totally different.

All of Dad's relationships ended exactly the same: subpoena, beep of a moving van backing up the driveway, pile of his clothes burning on the front lawn.

We're looking for answers in a landfill instead of looking to people who bring the light.

Japan is the perfect example of make plans, and watch God laugh.

Pope John Paul didn't die - he pre-boarded.

The United States ranks 14th in the world in education. Even if we subtract Sarah Palin's test scores, it only bumps us to third. Damn you, Finland!

We are brought into this world cold, weak, and helpless. Then it gets worse.

The government favors the most diplomatic language. That's why any letter to them should always start with, "Dear turkeys and foul maggots..."

The young, in their innocence, are often wise and capable of teaching the old.

Generals do not always run wars the way they would like to, nor the troops under them.

I reckon that the Bailey Bridge and the bulldozer were the greatest advances in military engineering in the years between World War I and World War II.

No one's reputation is quite what he himself perceives it ought to be.

My favorite characters are the ones that are the most successful movies.

To me, there are things you're good at and things you're not so good at. For some reason, I'm good at darker characters. It has to do with how you look.

I remember from when I use to be a dancer, there is an expression among dancers, I had a T-shirt that said: SHUT UP AND DANCE.

Also for me it was different because I play a lot of villains and in this one I play a dad and I play a good guy, basically. He's the Secretary of the Treasury. I never had a job like that.

Guns make me very nervous. They're dangerous. I'm more of a pacifist than anyone could imagine.

Obvious things like The Deer Hunter. After that happened, the scripts got better. Opportunities happened.

People think that my favorite roles to do are villains, but I find comedy to be the most challenging and rewarding.

The best thing for me is, when I'm not working, is to be at home and to have a script or two scripts is better, and to be just walking around the house and just thinking about the lines.

Onstage I have a natural chutzpa that audiences like. I'm out there.

I've made movies that we're very successful that we're a complete surprise, and I've made movies that I thought we're going to be very successful that, you know.

I don't even like holding them. Whenever I hold a gun, I want to get it out of my hand as quick as possible.

A job leads to a job, just like anything else, and it became apparent that this was probably what I was going to keep doing.

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.

I think that if I had grown up and had been in show business and the movies twenty five, thirty years earlier, I think I would have made a lot more musical movies.

Movies are terrifically optimistic enterprises.

If you play a king, it's better if everybody treats you like a king.

It's interesting - a lot of good actors are good mimes. But I'm terrible. If I tried to do an impression, nobody would know what I was doing.

I live sort of in the country and I like that. It's very quiet, it's beautiful.

If you do movies that are modestly budgeted, the way they finance them is they figure out how they can sell them.

It's what actors call a big, juicy part, when you're a leading man. I don't get a lot of those. I get a lot of supporting things.

One of the difficult things about being an actor is to stick around.

I know that whenever I think about death, I come up against a stone wall.

Death is wonderful because you can't think about it. How are you gonna think about it?

To be honest, I was never very ambitious. And I still am not.

I don't usually get to play fathers or grandfathers or uncles. Now that I'm older, maybe I can play people closer to myself. I'd like that.

There are places I don't want to go. Making movies on tops of mountains, in the desert, playing scenes while icy torrents of rivers rush by. The jungle. It's very uncomfortable.

I want to make movies on a soundstage. They close the door and it's nighttime, daytime. If it has to rain, they make the rain. That's what I like.

I got [Muhammad Ali's boxing shorts] for $40 at an auction. Nobody wanted them. I have them framed in my house.

I don't have a lot of hobbies. I don't play golf. I don't have any children. Things that occupy people's time. I just try to take jobs.

I have boxes full of stuff. Most actors do have a trunk full of stuff, paintings or scripts. It never comes to anything.

I suppose in order to succeed at something you have to be very persistent. I've never done that.

I grew up in music theater playing to the audience - singing and dancing and showing off. That's really my background. But the camera's different. I think I'm more at home on stage.

It's true in most movies I don't use my own voice.

In England, and all over Europe, and all over the world, actors act until they die. They get old, really old, and they're still working. They just keep doing it.