Jack Nicholson Quotes & Sayings

He [Castro] is a genius. We spoke about everything. — Jack Nicholson

I don't have any fear of intimacy, but rather thrive on it, which is rare in a public person. — Jack Nicholson

I would never complain about my life, even though I really would like to have a mate. — Jack Nicholson

If you think you're attractive, you're always attractive. — Jack Nicholson

Have you ever danced with the Devil in the pale moonlight? — Jack Nicholson

The minute that you're not learning I believe you're dead. — Jack Nicholson

That's what I like about the movie business: you're always in contact with wonderful and interesting people. — Jack Nicholson

I am a person who is trained to look other people in the eye. — Jack Nicholson

Once you've been really bad in a movie, there's a certain kind of fearlessness you develop. — Jack Nicholson

I've been too many places. I'm like the bad penny. — Jack Nicholson

A lot of people manage to find common ground and not let disagreements or tensions build up and destroy them, and other people break up or get divorced. I don't think anything is ever going to change that situation. You simply try to find an accommodation and an understanding with another person and work from there. — Jack Nicholson

We learn how to kiss, or to drink, talk to our buddies-all the things that you can't really teach in social studies or history-we all learn them at the movies. — Jack Nicholson

My motto is: more good times. — Jack Nicholson

The blues and jazz will live forever ... So will the Delta and the Big Easy. — Jack Nicholson

Being pigeonholed is the death of all actors. — Jack Nicholson

I don't think many people have a very good understanding of leisure and the importance it plays in our lives. — Jack Nicholson

Comedy is much harder, it's a lot more exacting. You can't just be real and you can't just use the same kind of techniques you use to fill up a regular scene. — Jack Nicholson

I'm a New Wave baby, so I got very stimulated by foreign film. — Jack Nicholson

One of my school friends' parents owned a minigolf course, and a bunch of us kids would play there all day in the summer. Two-under deuces was a good score. — Jack Nicholson

I assume most of the characters I play are exactly like me. — Jack Nicholson

You look at someone long enough, you discover their humanity. — Jack Nicholson

Kids are life's only guaranteed, bona fide upside surprise. — Jack Nicholson

Never rub another mans rhubarb — Jack Nicholson

I eat breakfast 300 yards from 4000 Cubans, who are trained to kill me, so don't think for one second that you can come down here, flash your badge and make me nervous. — Jack Nicholson

What's beautiful is all that counts, pal. That's all that counts. — Jack Nicholson

A lot of people can't remember things because they weren't actually there to begin with - they don't take it all in. — Jack Nicholson

I love working with women directors. They don't mind making you cute. — Jack Nicholson

I'm such a perfectionist. I always feel overpraised or whatever. In the abstract, I know I'm a good person, a good professional. But it's nice to be noticed a little bit, ain't it? — Jack Nicholson

No issue is more compelling than the air we breathe, be it hot or cold, be it hawk or human. — Jack Nicholson

My point of view, while extremely cogent, is unpopular ... That the repressive nature of the legalities vis-a-vis drugs are destroying the legal system and corrupting the police system. — Jack Nicholson

I'm against cronyism, and I had to learn that early on. Like, I don't have an entourage, because I saw the negative effects of those things. — Jack Nicholson

Even in the most sophisticated person, it is the primitive eye that watches the film. — Jack Nicholson

I just like art. I get pure pleasure from it. I have a lot of wonderful paintings, and every time I look at them I see something different. — Jack Nicholson

I hate giving advice, because people won't take it. — Jack Nicholson

I think of a man and I take away reason and accountability. — Jack Nicholson

There's no point dwelling on what might or could have been. You just have to go forward. — Jack Nicholson

Well, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I haven't been a rogue most of my life. — Jack Nicholson

I resist all established beliefs. My religion basically is to be immediate, to live in the now. It's an old cliche, I know, but it's mine. I envy people of faith. I'm incapable of believing in anything supernatural. So far, at least. Not that I wouldn't like to. I mean, I want to believe. I do pray. I pray to something ... up there. I have a God sense. It's not religious so much as superstitious. It's part of being human, I guess ... Do unto others: How much deeper into religion do we really need to go? — Jack Nicholson

There is no way you can get people to believe you on screen if they know who you really are through television. — Jack Nicholson

There are short parts that I as an actor am very right for. Or I just like the part. Or you need someone like me for the movie. By that I don't mean at the box office, I mean in the execution of the material. — Jack Nicholson

Most of the early part of an actor's career, you do the jobs you get. — Jack Nicholson

You are more thoughtful because you don't act as quickly anymore. When I turned 70 it was the first time I felt young for my age. Fifty dropped on me like a ton of bricks - there is something about that number - but when 70 came along I felt good about it. — Jack Nicholson

I don't play golf competitively. I tell everybody that I cheat so they won't gamble with me. That's why you can't watch football. Everybody's gambling. They don't want to watch the game; they watch the spread. — Jack Nicholson

I want my kids to have a deep, inner feeling that it's alright to be happy, that you don't have to be constantly manufacturing problems that you don't really have. — Jack Nicholson

The less people know about me, the easier my job is. — Jack Nicholson

In the real world there's an after-effect of disappointment if you lose an argument. But if, to begin with, you're set up not to have this particular autonomy, then you're not disappointed. — Jack Nicholson

Life doesn't have to be about finding Osama bin Laden or becoming the president of the United States. Life is about the little things, which is one of the things you learn when you get older. — Jack Nicholson

I love discourse. I'm dying to have my mind changed. I'm probably the only liberal who read Treason, by Ann Coulter. I want to know, you understand? I like listening to everybody. This to me is the elixir of life. — Jack Nicholson

I began to think that the finest modern writer was the screen actor. This was in the spirit of the Fifties where a very antiliterary literature was emerging - Kenneth Patchen and others. I kind of believed what Nietzsche said, that nothing not written in your blood is worth reading; it's just more pollution of the airwaves. — Jack Nicholson

Early on, if I was alone two three nights in a row, I'd start writing poems about suicide. — Jack Nicholson

Decent people shouldn't live here. They'd be happier some place else. — Jack Nicholson

I would never say, "I'm retired." I believe if I decided to just not work, in six months everybody would just forget whether you were working or not. — Jack Nicholson

I've always had an urge to feed my need to have fun and feel free. I don't see any interesting alternatives. — Jack Nicholson

I worry from the moment I take a job. I worry about how I'm going to do it, if I can do it ... Then I walk on set and the director says, 'Roll', and all of a sudden, all of it disappears and it's all happening, and I relax, and I'm doing what I do, and I'm not even thinking about it. — Jack Nicholson

Acting is everybody's favorite second job. — Jack Nicholson

Everybody's old enough for a beer, ain't that right, Mule? — Jack Nicholson

When you use a dialect, you worry that the people you're imitating will think you're making fun of them. — Jack Nicholson

You can follow the action, which gets you good pictures. You can follow your instincts, which will probably get you in trouble. Or, you can follow the money, which nine times out of ten will get you closer to the truth. — Jack Nicholson

As an actor, I want to give in to the collaboration with the director because I don't want my work to be all the same. The more this can be done with comfort, the more variety my work has had. — Jack Nicholson

I don't want people to know what I'm actually like. It's not good for an actor. — Jack Nicholson

I love the company of people. I always have and always will, it comes with my family. But earlier in life I might have got a little nervous if I was alone for a day or two in a row. I might think, "Where are they?" Now, I just go on doing naturally what I do. — Jack Nicholson

I never had a policy about marriage. I got married very young in life and I always think in all relationships, I've always thought that it's counterproductive to have a theory on that. — Jack Nicholson

I don't remember if I've been asked seriously to direct a picture. I understand that. I'm very good business for people as an actor and perhaps they'd rather I didn't. — Jack Nicholson

I'm certainly not as tough as people think. I'm not a fighter and so forth. I'd just as soon go home. — Jack Nicholson

When we make mistakes they call it evil. When God makes mistakes they call it Nature! — Jack Nicholson

Charlize Theron and Cate Blanchett are very good actresses. — Jack Nicholson

You know, I think I understand what you're like now. You're very beautiful and you think men are only interested in you because you're beautiful. But you want them to be interested in you because you're you. The problem is, aside from all that beauty, you're not very interesting. You're rude, you're hostile, you're sullen, you're withdrawn ... oh, I know- you want someone to look past all that at the real person underneath. But the only reason anyone would bother to look past all that is because you're beautful. Ironic, isn't it? In an odd way you're your own problem. — Jack Nicholson

On the birth of his son after having had two daughters: I finally got it right. — Jack Nicholson

With comedy, you have to do it right. In a drama, there's a lot of different ways to succeed in a moment. But comedy comes from reality. You can't try to be funny. — Jack Nicholson

It's very easy to go down, so always live up. Incline yourself upward. — Jack Nicholson

I only take Viagra when I'm with more than one woman. — Jack Nicholson

I envy people of faith. I'm incapable of believing in anything supernatural. — Jack Nicholson

Don't look so scared. — Jack Nicholson

I wasn't a babe in the woods. I'd watched a lot of stars, from James Dean to Brando, and I'd seen everybody alive work at MGM. I had a certain old-timer's quality, even though I was young and new, and drew on what I believed before I made it. — Jack Nicholson

There's probably no one who understands Method acting better academically than I do, or actually uses it more in his work. But it's funny - nobody really sees that. It's perception versus reality, I suppose. — Jack Nicholson

In this industry, there are only two ways up the ladder. Rung by rung or claw your way to the top. It's sure been tough on my nails. — Jack Nicholson

You only lie to two people in your life, your girlfriend and the police. — Jack Nicholson

My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch. — Jack Nicholson

There has long been a bemoaning of the lack of opportunity to make films that are anything but explosions or the ladling on the pea soup or whatever you want to call it. You can hardly make a movie where somebody isn't a murderer or a rapist or, if it's a "Fried Green Tomatoes" that isn't some wistful thing on this, that or the other thing. — Jack Nicholson

When I come up against a director who has a concept that I don't agree with, or maybe I just haven't thought of it or whatever, I'd be more prone to go with them than my own because I want to be out of control as an actor, I want them to have the control, otherwise it's going to become predictably my work, and that's not fun. — Jack Nicholson

I'm an actor who they said was wrinkled and balding and everything else when I was in my early 30's. Most of the people who wrote that who thought they were younger than me are now bald and wrinkled. — Jack Nicholson

I was invited to join the MGM cartoon department. But if I'd started work in animation I'd have had to take a cut in salary, so I didn't. — Jack Nicholson

I'll tell you one thing: Don't ever give anybody your best advice, because they're not going to follow it. — Jack Nicholson

I don't even own a cell phone. — Jack Nicholson

I didn't know that my sister was really my mother until I was thirty-seven years old. But life has taught me that there have been a lot of things that I didn't know. — Jack Nicholson

I certainly knew my father. He just didn't happen to be my biological father. — Jack Nicholson

Do you think God knew what he was doing when he created woman? — Jack Nicholson

I come from the Lynchs of Sligo. You know, I went there, but I looked in the phone book and there are nine million Lynches in Sligo. — Jack Nicholson

I learned a long time ago in Hollywood that the only person I should vote for is myself. — Jack Nicholson

Having kids is the most innately positive thing that anyone can do. — Jack Nicholson

You can call me Joker. And as you can see, I'm a lot happier. — Jack Nicholson

I have never felt brutalized as an actor. Many actors do, some times, but I've never had that experience. If I'm not happy with the balance, I just won't work with that person again. — Jack Nicholson

This town needs an enema! — Jack Nicholson

I always knew there wasn't going to be anybody to help me and emotionally support me, that whatever I did I'd have to do on my own. — Jack Nicholson

I don't want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me. — Jack Nicholson

If I were an Arab-American, I would insist on being profiled. This is not the time for civil rights. There are larger issues for Americans. — Jack Nicholson

Freedom in every sense but primarily political sense, a rise in repression that stems from a repression of sexuality. It's AIDS, it's herpes, it's this, it's that. Ask any saloon owner what's happened to social life in America and they'll tell you it's a different world and these people are strongly misinformed by the media, peer pressure. — Jack Nicholson

I take responsibility for my successes as well as my failures. But when I look at my professional mistakes, I'm always left with the feeling that maybe I should have done more. — Jack Nicholson

Million bucks won't see you through a major health crisis. — Jack Nicholson

Children give your life a resonance that it can't have without them. — Jack Nicholson