Philip Seymour Hoffman Quotes

Well, in the theater, I think you're actually more responsible for what is going on onstage as a director than you are in film.

Being with a kid always takes you to being a kid somehow, and they really are showing me a childhood I might not have had in some way.

Sometimes I'm uncomfortable with the level of fame I've got! It all depends on the day and what's going on. I don't desire any more fame. I don't need it.

Creating something is all about problem-solving.

People used to be funny about approaching me, but now they seem to think I'm as sane as anyone who's done what I've done in movies can be.

Learning how to die is therefore learning how to live,

Sometimes I have a great day of filming and sometimes the theater strikes me better. It just depends.

Don't let people treat you like a cigarette, they only use you when they're bored and step on you when they're done. Be like drugs, let them die for you.

Being unemployed is not good for an actor. No, it isn't, no matter how unsuccessful you are. Because you always remember getting fired from all the restaurants. You remember that stuff very, very strongly.

I've never been on a cruise.

No one wants to be pretentious about what they do or take it seriously, because that is just weird.

Life's pretty funny when you're objectively on the outside looking at it.

Film's hard when you don't have any relationship with the director at all and you just show up. Then you really are just a gun for hire.

Actors are investigators.

I have an awful memory, and I have a great memory. Meaning that, if I'm trying to remember something, I can't remember it. But my recall is fantastic.

I think I would have drank myself to death, literally, if I didn't just stop, once and for all when I did. I am not ever going to preach to anyone about drugs or drinking. But, for me, when they were around, I had no self control.

You have to understand that crew members make movies so they're seeing a lot of actors all the time in their career acting.

I don't get nervous when I'm directing a play. It's not like acting.

I didn't really buy LPs or go to concerts.

Acting's difficult for me because I think you have to be passionately involved in what you're doing.

If you get a chance to act in a room that somebody else has paid rent for, then you're given a free chance to practice your craft.

I think good art, if I could be pretentious enough to say, I think good art deals with the micro to explain the macro.

In a film there a lot of people scheduling, you know.

I think directors should be confident in their leadership capabilities. I think directors should be confident in what they want to do.

The idea that you have a vision of what you're supposed to be, or going to be, or where your kids are going to be - and that that doesn't work out - is always going to be something that's going to affect people and move people.

I would definitely say pleasure is not happiness. Because I think I kill pleasure. Like I take too much of it in, and therefore make it un-pleasurable, like too much coffee, and you're miserable.

My mum is incredibly intelligent.

I do feel like all the people I meet, all the people I'm in discussions with, if I'm working with somebody, I sense the same energy that everybody is suffering from the same predicament.

A self-awareness moment. All of a sudden everything he has done comes flashing into his mind, a self-criticism that is unbearable.

Creating anything is hard.

There's things that you don't want to do and they keep haunting you and following you. Bennett Miller directed this project [Capote], who is a friend of mine since I was 16, and Danny Futterman wrote it, and he's also been a friend of mine since I was 16.

If I don't feel like I'm doing the job well, and I don't know how to get there, or I'm too scared, or whatever, I'm not a happy guy and I'm not pleasant. I'm not pleasant to be around.

Why you do something is always kind of a mystery to me.

If all people are encouraged to actually see who they're coexisting with, or even if they're not coexisting with other people.It's like to look at the world you're in.

I work constantly but I work at a lot of different things. You know, I run a theater company in New York, I direct plays, act in plays, in movies, so I try to keep it eclectic.

There is no pleasure that I haven't actually made myself sick on.

With "Good Night, and Good Luck," I think it's kind of obvious what [Truman Capote]'s getting at there, and the importance of how it's playing out today, that is journalism doing, are the journalists doing their job, are they being the other checks and balances in our country that the way that obviously Edward R. Murrow was back then.

I got sober when I was 22 years old.

The drama nerd comes out in me when I'm in a theater.

My mum's name is Marilyn O'Connor. She's here tonight and I would like if you see her for you to congratulate her because she brought up four kids alone and she deserves congratulations for that.

To have that concentration to act well is like lugging things up staircases in your brain. I think that's a thing people don't understand. It is that exhausting. If you're doing it well, if you're concentrating the way you need to, if your will and your concentration and emotional and imagination and emotional life are all in tune, concentrated and working together in that role, that is just like lugging weights upstairs with your head ... And I don't think that should get any easier.

Plays never feel like the right thing to do at the time.

I think therapy is a helpful thing. I think everyone knows it. You do it for your life, you do it for yourself, because you want to explore some things, and get at the bottom of some things. It's about your life, the quality of your life.

I don't have a specific thing I want anyone to get out of anything I do.

I know I wasn't as handsome as some other guys, but I was OK with that.

There are a lot of things going on with my life right now that don't just have to do with career. So I have a hard time making decisions about work. That's really a luxury problem.

I think I'm less anonymous than I was.

When you're playing someone who really lived, you carry a burden, a burden to be accurate. But it's one that you have to let go of ultimately.

Films are always a fiction, not documentary. Even a documentary is a kind of fiction.

I've seen a lot of friends who have a lot of great projects, whether it's a script or a play or whatever, and it is a great project and they have great people involved, and they can't make it.

My ideal weight is 205, actually.

It's hard for anybody who works a lot and has children. But I wouldn't trade it for anything.

When you have a child, as anyone knows who has them, that's basically all you want to talk about.

Bob Glaudini, the writer, he's a wonderfully talented man and all his plays and his screenplays, they all have sense of something bigger, even though you're looking at something very simple.

In order for something to be born, something has to die.That's not always, but there is something about that that I find to be true. That is, it's a natural thing.

When you read, you think, and when you smoke, you think. It's a pleasurable thing, and not a duty.

I think you gotta have an honesty and a humility about human nature and that it's not about you at the end of the day.

Vanity is something that will only get in the way of doing your best work, and ultimately if you're truly vain you care more about your work than how you look in your work. I actually consider myself a pretty vain guy when it comes to that.

Yeah, writers do hate writing.

Directing is a really kind of amazing thing, because you're helping others and, in the middle of that, you have to worry about yourself.

When people don't know who you are, they're seeing your work for the first time. But if they've seen a lot, getting certain things across is a more difficult.

I got into plays in high school then I ended up going to college for it.

I think part of being an actor is staying private.

Ultimately, I think writing is a mixture of craft, inspiration, and being incredibly, courageously explorative with yourself - and being brutally honest, too.

You can look at anything as a cult. Churches are cults in their own way.

One person's religion is another person's cult.

I do understand what it is to not want to commit to someone, knowing that might bring pain or commit to a life that has to do with being responsible to people other than myself. These things, I think, are normal things.

The film is made in the editing room. The shooting of the film is about shopping, almost. It's like going to get all the ingredients together, and you've got to make sure before you leave the store that you got all the ingredients. And then you take those ingredients and you can make a good cake - or not.

There's nothing risky in talking about your personal life. People do it all the time.

People aren't going to throw the kind of money at certain people that they used to.

Well, I think everyone struggles with self-love.

Was I happy? Or was I just not aware?

I have three children and I think I'm happy when I'm with them and they're okay. When I see them enjoying each other in front of me, and then they let me enjoy them in turn. That brings a feeling which I would say is happiness.

I have a fine level of recognition in the business and among the acting community now, so I consider myself one of the lucky ones. If I didn't think that, there would be something wrong with me. I'm grateful and thankful for what I've got.

When you become a parent, you look at your parents differently. You look at being a child differently. It's an awakening, a revelation that you have.

I don't want to repeat myself.

To be fair to my dad, he is one of the brightest men I've ever met.

Sometimes I take a temperature of things just because everyone else does. Especially when I'm doing a play. I want to know what people are thinking, positive or negative.

Life is short. Time is short. As we get older, time does quicken. It's long, and it's long pertaining to that thought, that the past is not done with you because you can't rid of it.

I always thought I'd be a New York theater actor, riding my bicycle to rehearsal. That was all I ever wanted.

You have to have a personal connection. You have to really want to do it, because if you don't, investing yourself personally, your thoughts, your emotions, yourself into a part, is something you're not going to want to do as much.

I try to live my life in such a way that I don't have any regrets. That's probably why I work so much. I don't want to feel I missed something important.

I feel like the need to want to create and make something is stronger than the difficulties are going through.

The foibles of my body are pretty much out there in the work I do.

I'm probably more personal when I'm acting than at any other time. More open, more direct. Because it allows me to be something that I can't always feel comfortable with when I'm living my own life, you know? Because it's make- believe.

I didn't have any idea that I would be able to have a career in film.

My image of Jesus is someone who is exciting ... Were he alive today, he would be causing havoc!

I know some really great actors who are pretty judgmental people, pretty critical people. But they're great actors. When they're acting, that's the craft.

I've grown to really love musicals, you know?

You know the circus performer who spins the plates in the air you know, and he'll spin six or seven plates in the air? Acting sometimes is kind of that guy spinning all those plates in the air but in your head and in your body.

My favorite thing about acting is being alone and going through the scripts and working on it and getting ideas and asking myself questions, looking outside myself for them and researching and getting to the bottom of something and being creative with it as an actor and how to express it in a creative fashion. That's my favorite part. And, the actual acting of it.

People actually live with their id exposed. They're not good at concealing what's going on inside.

In life, do you ever really know if you're missing an opportunity? No, you really don't.

I had insecurities and fears like everybody does, and I got over it. But I was interested in the parts of me that struggled with those things.