David Duchovny Quotes & Sayings

I love the ocean, wide-open space and trees, but I'm not a gardener or anything like that. I think I may be, eventually. I was raised in the city, so I don't have that skill set, but my heart is more with the dirt than the concrete. It's an unrequited love with nature - a one-way love affair. — David Duchovny

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

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. — David Duchovny

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

You do hear some strange rumours floating around. One I've heard is that I'm allergic to metal. — David Duchovny

People always love and respect characters who speak the truth, even if the truth hurts. — David Duchovny

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

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. — David Duchovny

I don't mind close-ups, I like them, but they're kind of forceful - you see a lot, you get a lot of information in a close-up. There's less mystery. — David Duchovny

I'm very proud of my Scottish blood. — David Duchovny

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. — David Duchovny

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

My favorite parts of work as an actor and a director are those unplanned mistakes that do happen, because it's like catching lightning in a bottle. It's the best part of what we do. — David Duchovny

I don't think I'd ever be cruel to an animal. — David Duchovny

Humility is considered an un-masculine quality. — David Duchovny

I don't make decisions based on money. — David Duchovny

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. — David Duchovny

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

I lost my virginity when I was 14. And I haven't been able to find it. — David Duchovny

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. — David Duchovny

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. — David Duchovny

I've turned down jobs because I've said, 'Honestly, I can't find my way in. I can't do it. I love you, as a director. I think the script is good. You deserve better than I think I can do.' — David Duchovny

This is my religion - we're all animals, perfect animals created in the infinite image and imagination of nature. It's a life not without pain and competition and suffering, but it can be a life of dignity and mutual respect. — David Duchovny

It's always a mystery when you're going into a role - 'Here's your wife of 40 years and ... action!' How do you create ease or chemistry or whatever is supposed to exist? — David Duchovny

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. — David Duchovny

'Duch' means spirit and 'ovny' is kind of the adjectival ending, so the word itself means spiritual. It's my father's name, obviously. He took the 'H' out because he was tired of people saying Duchovny, but he never did it legally. When my parents divorced, my mother, to my father, put the 'H' back in. — David Duchovny

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. — David Duchovny

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. — David Duchovny

I don't see any difference in the craft of acting, in film or television. It's absolutely the same. It's different storytelling, playing a character over multiple hours, as opposed to two. — David Duchovny

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. — David Duchovny

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

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. — David Duchovny

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

I'm turning into a stricter dad. — David Duchovny

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

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. — David Duchovny

What if I don't love you?"
"I'll wait till you do."
"You might have to wait a long time."
They both got quiet. They both listened to the other breathe. They stood in different places on the exact same spot.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
There was a long pause, and then Ted said, "Waiting . . . — David Duchovny

Privacy is something I have come to respect. I think when I was younger I wanted to tell everybody everything, because I thought I was so damn interesting. Then I heard the snoring. — David Duchovny

For hundreds of years, that was the major form of entertainment: The grown-ups sat around and watched the kids play. Now they sit around and watch the television. The actors are the kids. — David Duchovny

I'm not really a gamer. — David Duchovny

If I were gay, you know. I think Woody Allen is one of a long list of men I might go gay for — David Duchovny

At one time there were voiceover artists, now there are celebrity voiceover artists. It's unfortunate because these people need the money less than the voiceover artist. — David Duchovny

I'll instinctively know that I identify with a character. — David Duchovny

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. — David Duchovny

There's two things I gotta do. One is, I gotta update my resume. And then, I have to call my mother. — David Duchovny

You become tyrannized by this notion that women must not only be treated equally, but they must never fail. — David Duchovny

I may be learning guitar, but I'll never be able to sing. — David Duchovny

I think there are ways in which shows can pop their heads up a little bit in the morass of everything you can watch. — David Duchovny

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.' — David Duchovny

Ted's old single bed had weird dreams in it. — David Duchovny

I always dreamt of being a basketball player. A dream that only I believed in. — David Duchovny

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. — David Duchovny

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

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

As we age, there are different things that become important to us and that means that different aspects of our character come to the forefront; certain aspects recede. And that's fun. It would be shitty to have to imitate myself. — David Duchovny

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

One of the scary things is that, when you're a kid, you look at your dad as the man who has no fear. When you're an adult, you realize your father had fear, and that you have it, too. — David Duchovny

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. — David Duchovny

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

'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. — David Duchovny

It's always like you write a poem when you can't really say what you're trying to say. — David Duchovny

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.' — David Duchovny

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. — David Duchovny

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. — David Duchovny

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

Anxiety is part of creativity, the need to get something out, the need to be rid of something or to get in touch with something within. — David Duchovny

It's hard to find scripts that know what they are from page one to page 115. — David Duchovny

My whole life, I've wanted things before I was ready. I was always pushing for the next job, the next success. I was so focused on achieving and the path that I was missing some great point about life. — David Duchovny

I mean, you always want everybody to pat you on the back and tell you you're wonderful every time you do something; I think that's human nature. — David Duchovny

Linda Brewer's example is inspiring, colorful and potentially very funny. Her journey also exists firmly in the Heartland tradition of American success stories and comedies. — David Duchovny

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. — David Duchovny

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. — David Duchovny

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. — David Duchovny

Usually, when I act, I try to forget the words and let them come, and just find my way through them. — David Duchovny

Everybody gets the tattoo they deserve. — David Duchovny

I think patience is a skill and I wish I had it. — David Duchovny

I'd love to direct more. — David Duchovny

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. — David Duchovny

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

The young girl was named Christina, and she was dying. She knew that. Bone cancer. Leukemia. They called it first names like that, but she knew its last name was death. — David Duchovny

I never thought about the actors on television or film, like what kind of life they had. — David Duchovny

What I liked about Mulder was his quality of not caring what other people thought of him. He was very independent. He wasn't interested in women. I liked that. He had kind of an intellectual quest, but not a sexual quest. That was the challenge of Mulder. Here was a guy that got almost sexually excited about aliens. And I wanted to be able to do that! — David Duchovny

Chemistry is really about two people who like to act together, I think. It's like tennis in the most cliched way. It's like if you hit the ball, they hit the ball back, and they don't hit it into the stands, and they don't put the ball in their pocket and walk off - and they don't argue with the umpire, you know? — David Duchovny

Every day I try to do breathing exercises, meditation, and yoga. These things sound awfully cliche, but they help me slow down and try to point to a truth. — David Duchovny

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. — David Duchovny

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. — David Duchovny

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. — David Duchovny

It's hard to leave anywhere. Even if the place sucked. It's hard to leave anywhere at all. — David Duchovny

The only episode which was completely my idea was for Mitch Pileggi, the actor who portrays Skinner, the Assistant Director of the FBI. He appears often in the series, but only for a few scenes. You know virtually nothing about him. I wanted him to have an episode that was his alone, so I wrote Avatar for him. He even has a scene that's pretty ... hot [knowing smile]. He was very happy. — David Duchovny

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. — David Duchovny

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

I still feel like I haven't grown up. — David Duchovny

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

Garry Shandling is someone I've publicly gone gay for, for jokes. Oh and anyone in the Twilight movies. I don't know any of their names, but all of them. The wolves, the vampires? They're all fantastic. — David Duchovny

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. — David Duchovny

I poop in the backyard ... I wear disposable diapers. — David Duchovny

Those characters are forever searchingeven if we're not watching them, they're out there, in some dimension. Mulder and Scully are still doing their thing, because that's their nature. — David Duchovny

And the bowling average? The obsession with statistics, the purity and power of the numbers worked to the seventh decimal place, as if some truth were hidden in the golden mean. He could feel his young self grasping for solidity in those numbers, keys to himself - I am this concrete, numerical thing. I am 134.7538658. — David Duchovny

Feelings come and go, unless you don't feel them. Then they stay, and hurt, and grow pear-shaped and weird. — David Duchovny

A bath tub, apparently, was the first thing I wanted to be. — David Duchovny