Hal Holbrook Quotes

I got a feeling about political correctness. I hate it. It causes us to lie silently instead of saying what we think.

Man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss.

I've had a very full career in the theater, on stage, in films and on television.

Death ends a life. But it doesn't end a relationship.

The main thing about money, Bud, is that it makes you do things you don't want to do.

There was so much to learn and it was all fun. But the best part was getting a laugh from an audience. That was like drowning in candy.

I developed a resistance to authority. Not to discipline - I learned that. But to authority. I like to think for myself. And I like to cause trouble.

You can go into Mark Twain's material and prove anything you want. He was against war. He was for war. He was against rich people and he was for them. He was a kaleidoscope

One of the problems with putting Huck Finn into a movie or on the stage is, you always make the white people stupid and racist. The point is, they don't know they're racist.

Man is the religious animal. He is the only one that's got true religion, several of them.

I think I may drop dead on the stage someday. I hate to think of it. But it's getting tough on me, the travel. The show, I somehow manage to rise up to it, you know. But I have no desire to retire.

[Mark] Twain called Congress "the only distinctly native criminal class in America. We've lately sent a United States Senator to the penitentiary." That was a fact.

To communicate with each other, we got to get mad at each other sometimes.

I don't have a director. The audience directs me.

Success is no longer content. It's how it sells.

I like to be who I am.

We don't have truth delivered to us very often, especially in this very commercialized world.

Mark Twain married the daughter of one of New York State's leading Abolitionists, Jervis Langdon, who helped Frederick Douglass who became the great Negro leader to escape from slavery.

Look, see, learn, become a citizen of Mankind, not just Hannibal, Missouri. That is the message of [Mark] Twain.

There's no good guys and bad guys.

I have a suicide impulse.

I tended to lean toward character work. I love to disguise myself.

I walked the streets of New York for two years begging for a job, and I couldn't get one.

I don't play golf. Mark Twain is golf to me.

Mark Twain cannot be defined.

Please don't refer to me as "channeling Mark Twain." I'm an actor. Not a channeler. That word is an iPhone shortcut. Acting is more eloquent than that.