Richard Gere Quotes

People are expecting me to be a certain way all the time. It's not like if I come in here with a totally different personality and right before the camera starts they see this new character. It confuses everything. Life has a consensus reality to it and if you use that to your advantage it makes it much easier.

I'm not that tough; I'm not that smart. I need life telling me who I am, showing me my mind constantly. I wouldn't see it in a cave.

There is nothing real about film. Nothing. Even the light particles that project the film can't be proven to exist. Nothing is there.

I've had an interesting life.

I have to admit, a manicured look works for me.

I'm rarely in a situation where, if you have a good idea, it's not embraced. That's stupid. And I don't work with stupid people.

Well I think on a simple ecological level that the diversity of this planet is important for our survival, that all of our different cultures, people are important to the health of the whole the same way that a species of animal should be saved and at a simple ecology level.

I do think that good actors can do any part. It doesn't mean that they are the best ones to do it.

I would say that the West is very young, it's very corrupt. We're not very wise. And I think we're hopeful that there is a place that is ancient and wise and open and filled with light.

I've stayed good friends with most of my girlfriends.

I've got a lot of opportunities, a lot of love in my life, a lot of things going for me. Still, it's not complete. I know this is not the whole thing. There's much more.

I think movies probably are a mirror in some way so we can see ourselves in them.

A lot of making a movie is the comfort level of the people. It's just feeling open. We need to get along. We have to know something about each other.

If you have any question in your mind, don't do it. If you go in thinking it's going to fix something that's wrong, don't do it.

There's really one character for every actor. The voyage is to find that one character.

I honestly do not think about celebrity or image or sexual expectations on me. It only comes up when people have a list of questions. But what I am told is that there is a quality that I have onscreen, where it's a little bit of everything.

In saving Tibet, you save the possibility that we are all brothers, sisters.

I think most of our religious institutions are pretty corrupt, so they're not reliable. I think the Christian religion that I was brought up with has very little to do with Christ, really, and more an institutions that have built up around the church.

Why is it when we have 10 million people in this country who say 'No', we still have a president who says 'Yes.' In a democracy, something's wrong here.

I would rather be loved than have money and all that other stuff.

I've lived in New York when I've had nothing, and I've lived in New York when I had money, and New York changes radically depending on how much money you have. It's the texture of life.

You've all heard some rumors about me over the years. I guess this is the moment to do it. My name is Richard Gere and I am a l*sbian.

Movie acting is primarily listening. If you're really engaged, that's all a movie audience wants to see is you processing what's happening in your world.

Sometimes it's an external approach where one can learn the skills required, let's say, learn to play the trumpet and in that process other things happen. It's magical: through the process of practicing four hours a day you start focusing on emotion and when you pick up the trumpet it's filled with feeling.

People have a different idea of how movies are made than they really are.

I meet human beings who are flawed, who are mentally ill and have enormous problems, but I don't think I've ever met someone who was a totally dark energy that had no humanity or sense of love or affection for anything in their life. That's very rare.

I can't remember that I was ever looking for anything. I was waiting for something to touch me. It's like, I'll be open to it, and see if it moves me. There has to be a "falling in love" moment.

The secret of my success is my hairspray.

Even in comedies, you've got to feel safe for things to just happen in a way that is natural and free, and recognizable as human.

Always walk towards open doors. And if they slam shut in your face, kick that sucker in and keep going.

Meditation is such a more substantial reality than what we normally take to be reality.

I think that as human beings we tend to compartmentalize, and we have a selective morality based on the situation we're in.

I'm less needy about needing to express myself through acting. I have many different lives outside of this that are extremely fulfilling.

There are some problems on this planet that seem to be intractable.

Julia [Roberts]. She's got two kids and animals, and I think she's a night nibbler. There'd be crumbs everywhere.

Certainly there have been better actors than me who have had no careers. Why? I don't know.

It's not enough to say that the Olympics is an athletic contest outside of politics, because it's not. The Chinese clearly are using the Olympics to recreate how they are viewed in the world and how they view themselves.

His Holiness [the Dalai Lama] has told me, urgently and repeatedly, that he thinks my photographs are crap. His exact words were, 'These photos are of poor quality. Why is there no sharp focus? There is no clarity!' I said, 'But your Holiness, it's Goyaesque.' And he said, 'No! It's out of focus!'

There are times when telling lies are not a bad thing. It can be a compassionate thing. But to make it benign, you have to be aware of your compassionate reasons for telling that lie.

I tend to be a bit of a dreamer.

Arabs are a burden on the world and should be annihilated.

On a movie set that works, you have your father figure, the director, you have your siblings, your other actors.

I know who I am. No one else knows who I am. If I was a giraffe, and someone said I was a snake, I'd think, no, actually I'm a giraffe.

In a way, one gets stability from being able to order the rational mind.

Tibetan Buddhism had an enormous impact on me.

When someone has a strong intuitive connection, Buddhism suggests that it's because of karma, some past connection.

Sometimes I'm kind of spacey. I'm like Ferdinand the bull, sniffing the daisy, not aware of time, of what's going on in the real world.

Western Buddhists in many ways are much serious Buddhists than Tibetans are.

When you get up in the morning, set your motivations.

In a situation like this, of course you identify with everyone who's suffering. (But we must also think about) the terrorists who are creating such horrible future lives for themselves because of the negativity of this karma. It's all of our jobs to keep our minds as expansive as possible. If you can see (the terrorists) as a relative who's dangerously sick and we have to give them medicine, and the medicine is love and compassion. There's nothing better.

Relationships are like sharks. They've got to keep going into deeper, colder water, sometimes scarier, darker territories ... to stay alive.

To read your own mind is to look at your self and read your soul. Hatred becomes love and that is the path I am working on

I'd bought a lot of really challenging, cutting-edge Joel-Peter Witkin photographs very early on. There were severed heads and amputated feet and hands in them - gruesome stuff. I had them all around the house, and if someone couldn't relate to it in some artistic way and instead just said "Yuck," then there probably wouldn't have been anywhere for us to go.

The idea that you're completing someone else in a marriage to me is death. That to me is a false start and most of us are usually taught that ... you've got to stand on your own. Then you can build something extraordinary.

The reality is, we can change. We can change ourselves. We can change our minds. We can change our hearts ... and therefore the Universe changes.

I had a friend in the neighborhood whose father had Playboy magazines, and we would go over and look at them. I remember cutting out pictures and hiding them in my room.

Things come out of nowhere, and you start evaluating the director, the cast, and all those other things going into it.

If the work is going well and it's something that has value with some meaning to it, it gives back a lot.

I think life is self-examination. Certainly the voyage that one takes.

If you have a built-in level of respect and trust and openness to essentially be yourself, it allows for a deeper uncensored communication [with your partner].

I don't regret anything. Everything happens for a reason-it's part of the healing process. Life is a healing process.

Billions of people don't practice a religion at all.

It's nice to have money, but the first thing I did with money was buy my father a snow-blower, because my job was to shovel snow, and I wasn't there to do it any more, so I was able to buy him a blower.

When His Holiness won the Nobel Peace Prize, there was a quantum leap. He is not seen as solely a Tibetan anymore; he belongs to the world.

I'm younger than I once was. Internally. Less self-conscious. Less insecure.

People get offended by animal rights campaigns. It's ludicrous. It's not as bad as mass animal death in a factory.

Sharon Stone. She is one of the most dedicated people I know, but also highly unedited.

Food is the only beautiful thing that truly nourishes.

Everyone responds to kindness.