James Earl Jones Quotes

We used to be "shiftless and lazy," now we're "fearsome and awesome." I think the black man should take pride in that. ~ James Earl Jones

More and more, when I single out the person out who inspired me most, I go back to my grandfather. ~ James Earl Jones

When I was in New York after I left the Army, I studied for two years at the American Theater Wing, studied acting, which involved dance and fencing and speech classes and history of theater, all that. ~ James Earl Jones

Actors never discuss future plans. ~ James Earl Jones

Reading was a big thing, yes. Books were a big thing. But the things that stick out were the newspapers. ~ James Earl Jones

In our resolve to build a better world ... we seek to summon what Abraham Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. ~ James Earl Jones

My youngest uncle Randy and I were the first members of our entire family to ever go to college. ~ James Earl Jones

I think the extent to which I have any balance at all, any mental balance, is because of being a farm kid and being raised in those isolated rural areas. ~ James Earl Jones

I do not know if it is true that all actors want to direct and all directors want to act, but in 1972 I tried directing and decided I had better stick to acting. ~ James Earl Jones

So in my junior year, I switched to the drama department. ~ James Earl Jones

People who lusted after Marilyn Monroe had no idea she stuttered. It is the secret of her sexiness, actually. ~ James Earl Jones

I mean, my people were very, very simple. They were peasant people, you know? ~ James Earl Jones

Othello is about many different kinds of love: it's about the light, beautiful side of love, and it's about the twisted, darker side of love, and it's about how, if you flip the emotional coin, love can make you do terrible things. (James Earl Jones) ~ Susannah Carson

Oh, people will come, Ray," Phillip intones, doing his best James Earl Jones. "People will most definitely come. ~ Jonathan Tropper

We children learned responsibility automatically. ~ James Earl Jones

And it was the idea that you can do a play - like a Shakespeare play, or any well-written play, Arthur Miller, whatever - and say things you could never imagine saying, never imagine thinking in your own life. ~ James Earl Jones

I knew real show business from my father, who had been an actor since he left the world of boxing. ~ James Earl Jones

I think self-criticism is sort of a given when you're an actor. It's also about being curious and not being flippant. Anyone who accepts being in this noble profession is automatically self-critical. ~ James Earl Jones

Once you begin to explain or excuse all events on racial grounds, you begin to indulge in the perilous mythology of race. ~ James Earl Jones

The trailblazers are my role models in this industry: Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, James Earl Jones, and Billy Dee Williams. I keep their pictures in my trailer and try to measure to their standards every time I act. ~ Brian J. White

A man's got to take care of his family. You live in my house, you sleep your behind on my bedclothes, you put my food in your belly because you are my son; you are my flesh and blood, not because I like you. It is my duty to take care of you. I owe a responsibility to you. ~ James Earl Jones

So I was determined to use my last two years in college doing something I thought I would enjoy, which was acting. And it was probably because there was girls over in the drama school too, you know? ~ James Earl Jones

The last thing I want to be is a rich black superstar. I just want to act. ~ James Earl Jones

Love is just love, it can never be explained. ~ James Earl Jones

So in my sophomore year, I took a senior anatomy class. I thought anatomy - being the thing that I should be most interested in - and if I could hack, as we called it, a senior class, I would continue. I didn't hack the senior class. ~ James Earl Jones

Stuttering is painful. In Sunday school, I'd try to read my lessons, and the children behind me were falling on the floor with laughter. ~ James Earl Jones

There is not enough magic in a bloodline to forge an instant, irrevocable bond. ~ James Earl Jones

Trying to make someone fall in love with you is about as pointless as trying to control who you fall in love with. ~ James Earl Jones

The inclusiveness of the Drama League luncheon is one of the most exciting things about it. I get to see old friends and meet new friends. Of course I can't tell who anybody is if they're under the age of 75. So my old friends become my new friends. ~ James Earl Jones

There haven't been enough profound things written about what being black means and what a black character is. Nobody knows. ~ James Earl Jones

In the wintertime, in the snow country, citrus fruit was so rare, and if you got one, it was better than ambrosia. ~ James Earl Jones

since I know for a fact that her class had been in the physics labs when Mr. Fibs got attacked by the bees he thought he'd genetically modified to obey commands from a whistle. (Turns out they only respond to the voice of James Earl Jones.) ~ Ally Carter

When you are mute, you become a good listener - it's all one-way. You appreciate the written word. You appreciate the sound. ~ James Earl Jones

When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language. ~ James Earl Jones

You weren't going to the theater to change the world, but you had a chance to affect the world, the thinking and the feelings of the world. ~ James Earl Jones

One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter. ~ James Earl Jones

I have an occasionally recurring stutter, but not when in character on stage in a play. Odd. James Earl Jones has the same pattern; he stutters in everyday life but not when acting. Preparation requires an actor's concentration to make the words belong to another person, which is its own sort of trance. ~ John Casey

You don't build a bond without being present. ~ James Earl Jones

My grandmother had the most dramatic effect on my life because she set me in one direction, and I had to go back the other direction for my sanity, and for my ability to be a social human being. ~ James Earl Jones

I was as content Off-Broadway as I was in a big Hollywood movie, and, I just try to be content wherever I am, you know. ~ James Earl Jones

Listening back to your speaking voice for the first time, unless you're James Earl Jones, it's a quite distressing process for most people. ~ Philip Selway

One person I've always wanted to work with who would be an amazing guest star would be James Earl Jones. ~ Nancy McKeon

My voice is for hire. My endorsement is not for hire. I will do a voice-over, but I cannot endorse without making a different kind of commitment. My politics are very personal and subjective. ~ James Earl Jones

The movie I've seen a million times - wait, that's not possible - my favorite movie of all times is 'The Empire Strikes Back,' directed by Irvin Kershner, executive-produced by the great George Lucas and stars Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams, James Earl Jones. ~ Donald Faison

I love to see actors' work. I love to surf channels late at night and accidentally run into movies I hadn't seen before. It makes me very proud of the profession. ~ James Earl Jones

I really think I ambled through a lot of my life, or ambled from one thing to the other. ~ James Earl Jones

Before my grandpa built his own church, we went to the neighboring town, and it was a white community. You know, up north, mostly middle European people and Indians, Chippewa Indians. We were welcome to that church, but once we got in, they didn't know what to do with us. ~ James Earl Jones

There was all this talk when Obama got elected about how we were living in a postracial world. But we're not. Until we get to the point where James Earl Jones can play, say, George Washington, race matters. You wouldn't put a white actor in blackface to play Othello. You shouldn't have a white actor in what amounts to yellowface to play Asian. ~ David Henry Hwang

The opportunity to carry water every night to James Earl Jones on stage is a dream come true. ~ John Larroquette

And I think, on the other end, there were actors who were not as good as I was, perhaps who could have hung in too, but began to blame everything on race. ~ James Earl Jones

My grandmother though, began to prepare in her own neurotic - and I think psychotic - way to face racism. So she taught us to be racist, which is something I had to undo later when I got to Michigan, you know. ~ James Earl Jones

I got out of the Army - in my world - I came to New York, for instance, when the civil rights movement was just beginning, and that created a certain energy, a certain rumble, a certain impetus for black actors. ~ James Earl Jones

My very first role was with James Earl Jones on 'Gabriel's Fire' on TV. He drove a Chevy Citation, which is the exact same car that I bought from a guy in San Francisco called Sandy Boone. I showed up on set, and James Earl Jones was driving the car I had bought from Sandy for $250. ~ Leland Orser

The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will loose. ~ James Earl Jones

The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good, and what could be again. ~ James Earl Jones

So by the time I got to Michigan I was a stutterer. I couldn't talk. So my first year of school was my first mute year and then those mute years continued until I got to high school. ~ James Earl Jones

I happened to happened to land in a time, in the middle '60s, that without knowing it, and without being told by the history of theater - which we now see from a historical point of view was an explosive time. ~ James Earl Jones

If you expect someone else to guide you, you'll be lost. ~ James Earl Jones

I was an adopted child of my grandparents, and I don't know how I can ever express my gratitude for that, because my parents would have been a mess, you know. ~ James Earl Jones

Speech is a very important aspect of being human. A whisper doesn't cut it. ~ James Earl Jones

The Earl of Mayne's kisses would never be called objectionable. They were so sophisticated and sleek, persuasive and delicate, that Helene didn't mind them - much. It was just that she really wanted to get back to Rees. She had a thought about the score he had given her.
"I must go," she said, pulling back. And then added, "alas. ~ Eloisa James

From the Earl of Hellgate's Memoirs, Chapter the Twenty-Sixth
I realized then that I had mistaken the nature of love. Love has nothing to do with desire; it's the quest for the divine, found on earth. It's finding a woman whose soul preserves a shard of heaven, and worshipping her ... worshipping at her feet. I was a new man. ~ Eloisa James

You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray [the confessed assassin of Martin Luther King]. We miss you, James. Godspeed. ~ Rush Limbaugh

And listen
tell your friend to try English Breakfast net time. It's a little more robust. Earl Grey is really more of a 'Sense and Sensibility' kind of tea.
Cab driver to J.D. Jameson ~ Julie James

I'm not a great one for chatting people up, because it's phony. I don't want people to feel at ease. You want a bit of edge. There are quite long, agonized silences. I love it. Something strange might happen. I mean, taking photographs is a very nasty thing to do. It's very cruel. ~ Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl Of Snowdon

I believe that photographs should be simple technically, and easy to look at. They shouldn't be directed at other photographers; their point is to make ordinary people react - to laugh, or to see something they hadn't taken in before, or to be touched. But not to wince, I think. ~ Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl Of Snowdon

What do you mean, a ghost? The Honorable James Augustus Peregrine Pympoole-Bothame, heir to the fourteenth Earl of Hardsdale, is taking no insults from young girls! ~ Kerstin Gier

I don't know. You just seem different now. Distant. Like you have PTSD.
I knew from where I spoke. My TSD got P'd when I was tortured by a monster named Earl. ~ Darynda Jones

The teacher took two long strides and stood beside Parker's desk. Before the boy could speak, Mr. Earl threw the desktop open. For a second, he stared into it. A white glow reflected off his face.
"What is this?" he said, as he reached toward the brightness.
"Careful, Mr. Earl," Parker started to say, but it was too late.
The teacher screeched before lurching against the desk. He went down quickly, his feet vanishing into the desk last. ~ James Van Pelt

I think it is quite wrong to photograph, for example, Garbo, if she doesn't want to be photographed. Now I would have loved to photograph her, but she obviously didn't want to be photographed so I didn't follow it up. Then somebody will photograph her walking down the street because she has to walk down the street, and I mind that sort of intrusion. I think this is horrible. ~ Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl Of Snowdon

I'm very much against photographs being framed and treated with reverence and signed and sold as works of art. They aren't. They should be seen in a magazine or a book and then be used to wrap up the fish and chucked away. ~ Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl Of Snowdon

If there is a good thing about photography, it is that it can be easily enjoyed. ~ Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl Of Snowdon

Emmitt Smith is a great running back. One of the things I like about him along with Edgerrin James is that neither one of them 'show out' when they run a touchdown. ~ Earl Campbell

This is right. You know it is." His other hand touched her cheek and curved around the back of her head. "Pennhyll wants you. The Black Earl wants you. I want you. And I will not dishonor you by offering you anything less than my name. I don't give a damn how many times I've made love to you in my head, I want you in life, undisputably and without the Black Earl standing around. When next we make love, Olivia, you will be my wife, and James must find a way to overcome his disappointment."
-Sebastian to Olivia ~ Carolyn Jewel

Scientists are the easiest to fool ... They think in straight, predictable, directable, and therefore misdirectable, lines. The only world they know is the one where everything has a logical explanation and things are what they appear to be. Children and conjurors-they terrify me. Scientists are no problem; against them I feel quite confident. ~ James P. Hogan

Opinions become dangerous to a state only when persecution makes it necessary for the people to communicate their ideas under the bond of secrecy. ~ Charles James Fox

Everything is sore right now. Everything. I look like I'm doing okay but I can't wait to get home. ~ LeBron James

I went further and further back through the centuries to get a sense of perspective but now at least I understand why Irish history evokes such strong passions and emotions. ~ James D'arcy

I hate the word superstar". I have never been able to think in those terms. They are overstatements. You don`t hear them speak of Shakespeare as a superpoet. You don`t hear them call Michelangelo a superpainter. They only apply the word to this mundane market ~ James Cagney

I needed to touch you. ~ Lorelei James

We serve nature's purpose by culling the herd, and our own by sharpening our skills. We are the predatory swarm! ~ James Luceno

To glorify God is not just to do so in religious worship, singing praise and enacting the traditional rites of the church. To glorify God is to reveal his character by being who we were created to be-the embodiment of the image of God in human form. ~ James W. Sire

... a part-time pirate can't get much respect around here. ~ James McMurtry

Just because life is hard, and always ends in a bad way, doesn't mean that all stories have to, even if that's what they tell us in school and in the New York Times Review. In fact, it's a good thing that stories are as different as we are, one from another. ~ James Patterson

I am damnably sick of Italy, Italian and Italians, outrageously, illogically sick ... I hate to think that Italians ever did anything in the way of art ... What did they do but illustrate a page or so of the New Testament! They themselves think they have a monopoly in the line. I am dead tired of their bello and bellezza. ~ James Joyce

I assure you, you will never survive on your wits alone. ~ LeBron James

You know, sloth is a sin," he says softly.
"I prefer to think of it as an adorable animal. ~ Ella James

Look at this!" he shouted "look at it! what has that one-woman force of chaos done to these spells?"
Sophie and Michael whirled round and looked at Howl. His hair was wet, but, apart from that, neither of them could see that it looked any different.
"If you mean me-" Sophie began.
"I do mean you! Look!" Howl shrieked. He sat down with a thump on the three-legged stool and jabbed at his wet head with his fingers. "Look. Survey. Inspect. My hair is ruined! I look like a pan of bacon and eggs!"
Michael and Sophie bent nervously over Howl's head. it seemed the usual flaxen color right down to the roots. The only difference might have been a slight, very slight, trace of red. Sophie found that agreeable. It reminded her a little of the color her own hair should have been.
"I think it's nice," she said.
"Nice!" screamed Howl. "You would! You did it on purpose. You couldn't rest until you made me miserable too. Look at it! It's ginger! I shall have to hide until it's grown out!" He spread his arms out passionately. "Dispair!" he yelled. "Anguish! Horror! ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Jivan: You think when you have love that love is easy to find, that everyone has it. It's not true. It's very hard to find.
Nedra: I haven't been looking for it.
Jivan: It's like a tree ... It takes a long time to grow. It has roots very deep, and these roots stretch out a long way, farther than you know. You can't cut it, just like that. ~ James Salter

Have you ever read Udolpho, Mr. Thorpe?" "Udolpho! Oh, Lord! Not I; I never read novels; I have something else to do." Catherine, humbled and ashamed, was going to apologize for her question, but he prevented her by saying, "Novels are all so full of nonsense and stuff; there has not been a tolerably decent one come out since Tom Jones, except The Monk; I read that t'other day; but as for all the others, they are the stupidest things in creation. ~ Jane Austen

As soon as we get the place secure, I'll get in touch," Miller said. "Okay, but don't take too long. If Thoth Station has a whorehouse left standing, I'm going to need help prying Amos out of it. ~ James S.A. Corey

Christ , in the parable of the vine dressers, has taught us a sublime lesson of justice, by showing that to the things which are not our own, we can have no just claim. ~ James F. Cooper

I wouldnae refuse a square go, but I'd best warn ye, I'm solid." It ~ Darynda Jones

I am Rot, James Moxie. I am the moment after you've decided to leave the one you love. ~ Josh Malerman

Gunn, like me, has a James Bond obsession. He would love to be James Bond, and it's a great role that I would love to be, someday. ~ J. August Richards

Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself. ~ James Anthony Froude

In regards to your love life, you're just entering into a whole of pain if you talk about it. If you've never said anything, there are no sound bites to haunt you when you're crying into a box of Kleenex after it all goes wrong. ~ Lily James

We can't change anything until we get some fresh ideas, until we begin to see things differently. ~ James Hillman

We are bombarded on all sides by a vast number of messages we don't want or need. More information is generated in a single day than we can absorb in a lifetime. To fully enjoy life, all of us must find our own breathing space and peace of mind. ~ James E. Faust

Cats are cats ... the world over!
These intelligent, peace-loving, four-footed friends- who are without prejudice, without hate, without greed- may someday teach us something.
-James Mackintosh Qwilleran ~ Lilian Jackson Braun