Jack Nicholson Quotes

I know I can act. There aren't too many other jobs I know how to do

Age is the first limitation on roles that I've ever had to encounter, and I hit that awhile ago.

Because you know, down deep in my heart, when all is said and done, I still live under the illusion that basically people think of me as an up-and-coming young actor.

This town needs an enema!

When it's over for a woman, it's over. You're not getting an appeal.

Comedy is much harder, it's a lot more exacting. You can't just be real and you can't just use the same kind of techniques you use to fill up a regular scene.

There's a tacit agreement today that the white male is the only legitimate target for any and all satire, criticism, and so forth. And we pretty much just accept it.

Being pigeonholed is the death of all actors.

I love working with women directors. They don't mind making you cute.

I eat breakfast 300 yards from 4000 Cubans, who are trained to kill me, so don't think for one second that you can come down here, flash your badge and make me nervous.

I've been too many places. I'm like the bad penny.

I'm a scamp. I don't deny it. I like myself.

Always try in interviews to avoid the cliches about the problems of public life.

I'm certainly not as tough as people think. I'm not a fighter and so forth. I'd just as soon go home.

I have given a name to my pain, and it is Batman.

I guess this proves there are as many nuts in the Academy as anywhere else.

It's difficult for people sometimes to recognise when they're happy. People sometimes seem to me to be afraid to be happy.

The stage has a certain discipline. But the ultimate standard is more exacting in film, because you have to see yourself and you are your own toughest critic.

I certainly knew my father. He just didn't happen to be my biological father.

I would never complain about my life, even though I really would like to have a mate.

I do pray. I pray to something...up there. I have a God sense. It's not religious so much as superstitious. It's part of being human, I guess.

I was invited to join the MGM cartoon department. But if I'd started work in animation I'd have had to take a cut in salary, so I didn't.

My only emotion is gratitude, literally, for my life.

If I go into a restaurant there's a very good chance that I'm going to spend my time being the mayor. If I want to have a good time, I'm happier having dinner here.

It's a slight stretch of the imagination but most people are alike in most ways so I've never had any trouble identifying with the character that I'm playing.

I sort of understood that when I first started: that you shouldn't repeat a success. Very often you're going to, and maybe the first time you do, it works. And you love it. But then you're trapped.

If you want your freedom, you have to be willing to work hard to exercise it.

I don't want people to know what I'm actually like. It's not good for an actor.

I resist all established beliefs. My religion basically is to be immediate, to live in the now.

I am in an age group where it is rude to discuss money, and now it is all anyone cares about.

Having kids is the most innately positive thing that anyone can do.

I can't hit on women in public any more. I didn't decide this; it just doesn't feel right at my age.

I've always thought basketball was the best sport, although it wasn't the sport I was best at. It was just the most fun to watch.

The camera photographs what's there.

I have mainly been interested in acting. I think it's a great job, a fine way to live your life.

I never thought in terms of typing myself, because I wasn't that successful. After an actor has done a few pieces of work, his naïveté is the part of the craft he has to nurture most.

With comedy, you have to do it right. In a drama, there's a lot of different ways to succeed in a moment. But comedy comes from reality. You can't try to be funny.

I was particularly proud of my performance as the Joker. I considered it a piece of pop art.

I'm such a perfectionist. I always feel overpraised or whatever. In the abstract, I know I'm a good person, a good professional. But it's nice to be noticed a little bit, ain't it?

Dissembling is a common tool of the anger junkie.

You can't say, "I'm gonna make a hit movie." You're as dead as you could be.

I hate giving advice, because people won't take it.

I am a person who is trained to look other people in the eye.

I'm fairly well off. I can't poor-mouth that away from people's sensibilities about me, which is something I worry about as an actor. But it would be real stupid of me to do something for the money.

The less people know about me, the easier my job is.

Children give your life a resonance that it can't have without them.

A lot of people can't remember things because they weren't actually there to begin with - they don't take it all in.

Once I got started acting I loved it.

I've always understood money; it's not a big mystical thing to me.

The fuel for the sports fan is the ability to have private theories.