David Duchovny Quotes

If you have Darwin, Christ and Nietzsche, they're all going to talk at once. You need somebody who listens.

Humility is considered an un-masculine quality.

Actually, I have an interest in finishing my Ph.D., but I just know I never will.

Dogs are the broccaflower of the animal kingdom.

Like many who are unable to play the game Ted had great insight into it. Perhaps being barred from success in a thing makes you overly perceptive of what makes success or failure in that thing, causes you to obsess on its technicalities and mysteries; whereas the gifted do not learn, they merely do, the less gifted stew, and ponder, and worry; they learn it the hard way and then they can teach it. The gifted can't teach what they never learned.

When Ted opened the door to find Mariana there, his first thought was, "I don't know what I'm wearing." And he didn't look down; he had a bad feeling and didn't want to face it, he kept his eyes on the girl, who said, "Hello, Theodore.

And maybe digression isn't really digression, maybe the shortest distance between two mind points is not a straight line. Chew on that.

I wouldn't say we were doing that. I think we probably stopped thinking. Though it took a while to stop thinking.

If Fox Mulder discovered that Larry Sanders was a clone? I think he would stab him ... but it wouldn't be with an ice pick.

I'd love to direct more.

I think the real heroic teachers are the ones who work with kids, like my mom and my sister do.

I don't think of myself as a TV actor. I think of myself as a film, television and Off-Off-Off-Off Broadway actor.

I drive an electric car.

I'm kind of stupid when it comes to gadgets.

I'm constantly amazed by the ability a child has to show sympathy, to read emotions, to get to the heart of any situation. It's unfiltered and completely inspiring.

You can't just wear the food chain around your neck like a bauble or necklace. You're part of it and if you keep treating it with disdain, that chain will strangle you.

I'm trying to protect what I advertise. That's my stance on any kind of self-expression.

If my work was good enough, I would never have to do publicity.

Emer was troubled at how all interpretation now devolved in matters of race or gender or religion. There was no art anymore, even in children's stories. Why wasn't the crow female? Why was The Creator a He? Wasn't Bald Eagle insensitive to men with hair loss? This is how we spend our time now.

If somebody says what they want or what they need it gives the person the chance to say yes or no, instead of suffering in silence or depravation or whatever it is.

I mean, there's chemistry in life and there's acting chemistry. I'm not saying they're the same thing, but they're as mysterious.

It's rare in movies or even in life where somebody owns up to their needs. I guess in a relationship it's the only way it has a chance to survive it.

Maybe the best things about celebrity are the things like being able to get that seat on the plane that you wouldn't normally get, but that's kind of like cheating.

You can't control your mind. Why would you want to?

I like my computer. But I don't know how to use it as well as the 10-year-old daughter.

I enjoy trying to figure out the best way to compliment the picture and not overpower it.

I've made so many mistakes. But it is my feeling that you learn from failures, so I welcome them as often as I can.

What strikes me is that 'XIII' looks like a movie. The shot making is movie-like, which is kind of fun - the kind of playful action movie shot making is pretty, is pretty good. What's also great about this game is its style and interesting story-line.

'The X-Files,' as I recall, we didn't know really what we were until the middle of the first year. You know, so if we'd been cancelled, you get cancelled before you mature into what it is you can actually be, which is too bad.

One of the nice things about acting is that it allows you to open up to the other people within you.

Whenever somebody says they need an angle for their story I always fear that they've got an idea and they want me to fit into it or they want me to come up with an idea myself or I'm supposed to be more revealing than I've been, and to me it just sounds like something I don't want to do.

You're raising a kid and you give it food and shelter and, most importantly, you give it the feeling that it's special. I think people react to celebrities like that - I mean, they treat celebrities like children.

Generally, I don't like to walk out of a movie. It's like a relationship - you want to see it to the end; otherwise, you won't know if you left early or not.

I don't make decisions based on money.

They drove farther north like that. In perfect loving antagonism. It occurred to Ted that maybe Marty was like all the red and gold leaves he saw burning on the trees. In nature, it seems, things reached their most vibrant and beautiful right at the point of death, flaming out with all they had - why not natural man? His father was red, green, yellow, and gold, like a beautiful bird falling from the sky. Parodoxical undressing again.

Sometimes when I'm swimming, I think that maybe someday I'll put my red Speedo up for auction. Or maybe I'll donate it to the Smithsonian. They can stuff it with two plums and a gherkin and put it on display.

I got married a bit late, I agree. In any other period of history I'd have been dead at that age and they'd have assumed I was gay. Like Michelangelo, or Leonardo da Vinci. But I was a late developer. I didn't go through puberty until I was 35.

In the U.S., oddly, we have images of men as arrogant and aggressive.

Larry Grobel's interviews are informative and insightful without being pandering or intrusive. You get the sense at all times of both intelligence at work-the interviewee's and Grobel's-both inspired by the encounter.

I really enjoy taking an outdoor shower.

Virgil reached into the wool cap that contained his dreads, stuffed so full as to give him the appearance, Ted thought, of the Great Kazoo on the latter years of The Flintstones or a Jiffy Pop container expanded to its max. (Ted made a mental note that these are not bad similes and hoped he could find them on a rainy day.)

I had a fear that I'd be typecast, but I don't really have that fear anymore.

He was impressed with his father's fiction and noticed certain stylistic tics that he shared, and figured it was genetic. Why would genes determine only physical traits, eye color and left-handedness? Why not other, more subtle, bodiless proclivities such as a love of the semicolon and a propensity to string modifying clauses ad infinitum?

I've run into certain geniuses of individualism - they are very few and far between - who live their lives completely on their own terms; they are very powerful and have a great amount of happiness. We all should aspire to that.

The happiest moment of my life was probably when my daughter was born.

You, me, the animals in the wild, the animal at your feet, the animal on your plate, the person next to you - We are all one We are all holy cows Moo

The worst thing a man can admit is 'I'm not 100 percent fulfilled by my family.' But it doesn't mean he doesn't love his family. I love my family, but I still want to work; I still want challenges. It took me a while to fall in love with the responsibility of family life, and it was a deep thing when I did.

Women's fashion is a subtle form of bondage. It's men's way of binding them. We put them in these tight, high-heeled shoes, we make them wear these tight clothes and we say they look sexy. But they're actually tied up.

I don't know about the baby, but I will be interested to see, like anyone who's a fan of the show [how it's resolved]," he said, and then joked, "They'll have to resolve me while I'm not there, so I hope they don't say, 'Oh yeah, Mulder's gone, what an asshole. He had a baby with me, he kissed me and then he left.'

Action is pretty boring to do as an actor. Action and sex scenes are silly because it's all faking.

It's not someone else's responsibility to honor my marriage. It's my responsibility.

I'm actually thinking about getting back to being a bath tub. I don't think anyone's ever quite segued into that.

Selfies, they call 'em, and that makes sense 'cause even though they're sending these pictures to others, it still smells like selfish to me. Is that why they call it an "I phone"? 'Cause it's all about me me me. Like talking to hear yourself talk.

There's nothing wrong with acknowledging the panoply of life's rich experience.

The key is to get to know people and trust them to be who they are. Instead, we trust people to be who we want them to be - and when they're not, we cry.

Obviously people's feelings are going to get hurt when you use certain words, but you can't outlaw words. They're really the history of our culture. They tell you what's going on. When you make words politically incorrect you're taking all the poetry out of the language. I'm pro anybody living their lives the way they want to live, sexually and otherwise; and I'm anti any kind of language repression.

Everybody gets the tattoo they deserve.

I think people still have a need for miracles. Science keeps telling them there's no life on Mars, there's no God, nothing's trailing Hale-Bopp, those people are just dead in their Nikes. But they want to believe in something.

As names that can mean things, I prefer spiritual to a lot of other things.

If you're smart, you'll always be humble. You can learn all you want, but there'll always be somebody who's never read a book who'll know twice what you know.

I feel I have to work hard to nurture whatever talent I have as an actor. I feel like it's not natural to me. So I don't take it for granted ... What I think is my natural ability - which is writing - I think I totally take that for granted.

Willie Mays was the best ever. When I was in college I once made a catch like the one Mays made over his head. Sometimes when I'm lying in bed at night I think about it. It still makes me warm.

I don't know how anybody gets better at anything aside from doing it.

I do not think that Mulder trusts any one other than Scully. He s very solitary. She is the only one who takes him seriously. I don t know if they re in love. In a way, their relationship is deeper than that, because they cannot live without each other.

Go to bed, Ted."

"Okay."

"Wake up angry.

It's almost obscene when you see people who haven't matured, who haven't changed, who don't have the weight of years on them. So that's interesting to me - to think about playing him into the future, anew.

I don't want to know what happens in any movie that I go to see.

I'm not a comic book character. I'm not Indiana Jones or Bond, I'm a flesh and blood guy who is ageing and changing. I don't have to do what I did in '93. I couldn't do it and thank God.

People think celebrities don't have to worry about human things like sickness and death and rent. It's like you've traveled to this Land of Celebrity, this other country.

I envisioned that as my life: staying in academia to make a living and then taking summers off to write my novels.

I love dogs. They live in the moment and don't care about anything except affection and food. They're loyal and happy. Humans are just too damn complicated.

I'm the one usually wearing the dress, which is what I would've preferred, but they wouldn't let me. It's been 15 years since I did that and my ass isn't as good as it used to be.

Every time Mulder smiles, people say, 'God, it was great to see you smile. Mulder never smiles.' I say, 'Mulder smiles a whole lot. He smiles at least once a show.' People get these ideas in their heads and they're impossible to shake. But, to be honest with you, Mulder is every bit as vulnerable and quirky as Ally McBeal. I think Mulder has pretty good legs, too.

I think people are always trying to demystify whatever acting is, so they want to know what your method is.

I don't believe in a conspiracy to hide the existence of extraterrestrial life.

When I grew up, I was in Manhattan the whole time. But my kids have been all over the world.

'Alien' is a great movie. So is 'Close Encounters.' But I'm not the guy who goes out to the science-fiction festival. '2001's good.

I'm not really a gamer.

I love the Lower East Side.

Games, by nature, have more plot options and non-linear qualities than TV and film.

A lot of times passion projects or films are difficult to make because they don't have proven directors attached to them.

I think patience is a skill and I wish I had it.

There is never a personal-life connection between my characters and myself. I'm a professional and I can access what I need to access, so there's no bleed-over. I didn't need to believe in aliens to play Mulder. As for my personal life, everything is fantastic right now.

I enjoy comedy and I hope that people enjoy watching me do it.

I think Mulder is the worst FBI agent in the world. He spends millions of dollars investigating these paranormal phenomena and never comes up with any evidence. He's the Kenneth Starr of the FBI.

He still loved her, loved her more for her wrinkles because they could not defeat his need for her. Or his love. His young lust had turned to love and then his love had aged back into lust. It was a circle. It was a miracle. It was the alchemy of flesh. They ate only what they caught from the sea - wahoo, barracuda, and mahi mahi, and they ate what they picked from the trees - papaya, banana, and coconut. Don't forget cerveza from the bodega. They did not run, they walked. They needed nothing but themselves. This was them: They were.

Just like every show has a tone, every show has different people on it playing different games. I don't say 'game' in a pejorative sense, I just mean, these are different stories that we tell ourselves when we go to work.

I'm half Jewish, half Scottish. It's hard for me to buy anything.

It seems unlikely that we're alone in the universe. But I'm pretty sure nobody's hiding any contact.

In this age of media and Internet access, we are much more talkative than ever before.

You humans drink our milk and eat the eggs of the chickens and the ducks. Isn't that enough for you? Isn't it enough that we give you our children and what's meant for our children? And if not, when is it enough? All you humans do is take, take, take from the earth and its beautiful creatures, and what do you give back? Nothing. I know humans consider it a grave insult to be called an animal. Well, I would never give a human the fine distinction of being called an animal, because an animal may kill to live but an animal never lives to kill. Humans have to earn the right to be called animals again.

Digression and digestion. It's what we do.

Sex is great until you die, but it's never as great as it was when you were a kid, when it was a mystery.

I think Polanski's an amazing director.

Sometimes the better the writing, the harder it is to play because you really want to service it. It's hard to be that quick and articulate in life. You've got to try to make it seem discovered, you know, not rehearsed.

I understand the self-loathing and the resentment, and the discipline that it takes to sit down in front of a typewriter or computer every single day, whether it's going well or not going well.

98% of the people in the world are harmless and wish you well, but it only takes one person who doesn't. That's what you're constantly on guard against.

The real truth about a lot of life's mysteries can be explained by science but people don't want to get in bed with science because it's cold. They prefer religion, myth, drama.

I still feel like I haven't grown up.

I don't like the idea of being eaten by a shark. I like to swim in the ocean, and I think much more about sharks than anyone should. I really resent the fact that my oceangoing experiences are ruined by 'Jaws.'