Sean Penn Quotes & Sayings

A child gets a fever in the United States and it's high enough and sustainable enough, all of us can bring a child to an emergency room. Most Haitians never had that opportunity. They didn't have the emergency room to bring them to. Virtually every time your child has 102 fever, you wait for it to die and you have no clean water to give it. — Sean Penn

There is a kind of sense of truth and reconciliation that is non-formalized, but it's understood and accepted. Haitians are Haitians and there is an inherent loyalty that forgives an awful lot. — Sean Penn

At this stage, what would be rewarding would be for audiences to want to watch. — Sean Penn

I'm not a breakfast eater. — Sean Penn

I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren's eyes if they continue that way of support. We've got to have equal rights for everyone — Sean Penn

The thing that's very close in the process is writing and acting, not directing. Directing's very different. — Sean Penn

Putting something in a movie because it's in the news doesn't make it political to me. If you're not going outside the same old, same old, if you're not pushing the envelope, then you're not doing anything. A good movie is a political thing. — Sean Penn

All I need are some tasty waves, a cool buzz, and I'm fine — Sean Penn

I choose movies that I think will speak to what's important. — Sean Penn

The bottom line is, you love your wife, you do your best with that. — Sean Penn

When I was growing up and somebody like Robert De Niro had a movie come out, it was a cultural event. Because he had such a confidence and a single mission that was so intimate. — Sean Penn

I really love to make movies. — Sean Penn

Well, I think that when you direct a movie or write it. And in the case of the two movies I did, I wrote and directed, they occupy a special place for you. — Sean Penn

A clearer and more conventional narrative would have helped the film without, in my opinion, lessening its beauty and its impact. Frankly, I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing there and what I was supposed to add in that context! What's more, Terry himself never managed to explain it to me clearly. — Sean Penn

I can't imagine being quite as lucky at any other time - I certainly never have been before. That goes right down from my producing partners to people like Eddie Vedder. But the two things that make me feel that this was meant to be now and not before was that the story itself has more resonance today - I find it a more important story today than it was then - and Emile. — Sean Penn

I do not believe in a simplistic and inflammatory view of good and evil. I believe this is a big world full of men, women, and children who struggle to eat, to love, to work, to protect their families, their beliefs, and their dreams. — Sean Penn

Child-rearing is my main interest now. I'm a hands-on father. — Sean Penn

Sacrificing American soldiers or innocent civilians in an unprecedented preemptive attack on a separate sovereign nation may well prove itself a most temporary medicine. — Sean Penn

In short form I'll say it was an approach to the family and to [author] Jon Krakauer that then led to me seeming to rise to the top of the heap of several filmmakers that were trying to get the rights. And by top of the heap I mean in terms of being somebody that was trusted to do it as they said they were going to attempt to do it and that this way of doing it would be something they would be willing to allow. — Sean Penn

It has nothing to do with the emotional demands of a role; I've done comedies that are as draining to me as any drama. — Sean Penn

There is no re-inventing the wheel. — Sean Penn

Beauty doesn't ask for attention — Sean Penn

I don't consider myself specifically political, you know? I think of working as an actor as being a human thing. The concerns I have that fall into politics are human concerns. — Sean Penn

When I go to bed at night and I think of humanity at large, I think of all those things. — Sean Penn

I can tell you that my contribution based on my interpretation of the book is unchanged. The other things, in terms of doing the research and following the trail of it, were probably pretty similar to what I would have done then. I think that what makes me celebrate that it took the 10 years is the various other people and contributors that I ended up having on board. — Sean Penn

We've let the blade of our innocence dull over time, and it's only in innocence that you find any kind of magic, any kind of courage. — Sean Penn

When I buy a Nikon camera, I have no tolerance for the instructions. I'm ready to make some mistakes using it and get some bad pictures back until I've figured it out for myself. — Sean Penn

Love is a mess, at best, and I figure it can be very real in spite of all the things people try to attach to it. — Sean Penn

One of the things you don't have in Haiti is you don't have anybody on crack doing something completely out of - that's unpredictable. Even at the worst times in Haiti, the violence that had happened, the lack of security that happened, was largely predictable because it was politically tied. — Sean Penn

When everything gets answered, it's fake. — Sean Penn

There is no shame in my saying that we all want to be loved by someone. As I look back over my life in romance, I don't feel I've ever had that. — Sean Penn

In my teens, I fell in love with the movies. — Sean Penn

The advice you give to young directors for sure is to go out and become some version of a successful movie actor. Do that first and say yes to people like Terrence Malick and Clint Eastwood and Woody Allen when they come and offer you movies. It's a great front row seat to filmmaking. — Sean Penn

I'm always frustrated when somebody makes a movie out of a book and they leave the book behind, or the heart of it. — Sean Penn

I cannot tell you that I ever fell in love with the theater as an audience. I fell in love with the theater as an actor for a period of time, but I have struggled as an audience, and I struggle more now than then. I was always a movie guy. — Sean Penn

It's a foreground of my feeling. That place moves me. And I don't mean my country; it's part of our shared natural world that happens to be particular to a sense of wherever my storytelling inclinations come from and my own history of kind of being a road rat and travelling. — Sean Penn

I think that people like the Howard Sterns, the Bill O'Reillys and to a lesser degree the bin Ladens of the world are making a horrible contribution. — Sean Penn

You tolerate me. You really tolerate me. — Sean Penn

I don't think you can get away with putting your talents in a toilet bowl and not having them flushed away. Forever. There is a level of murder of one's soul and of the culture that they're supposed to be feeding vitamins to ... — Sean Penn

I love stories about people who are smart enough to know that what they're doing is destroying them, but that knowing that doesn't help them. — Sean Penn

What happens is things come to you - director, script - and if you respond to it, it's because it's tapping into some part of what's inside you, and different roles tap into different parts. — Sean Penn

One of the reasons people sell out so quickly is because even the talented think they're frauds. It's a culture that doesn't encourage people to believe in the work they do. You're told to second-guess yourself all the time. That's where I think a little hostility and arrogance can save you. And I've never been lacking for either. — Sean Penn

There are a few directors around who I have some excitement about spending my $7 at the theatre watching their movies. — Sean Penn

My favorite thing to do is not act - it's that simple. — Sean Penn

I don't have any particular excitement about working with any specific director or actor at this point. — Sean Penn

That was madness. You're never going to bring one of those down with a handgun. — Sean Penn

I like to believe that love is a reciprocal thing, that it can't really be felt, truly, by one. — Sean Penn

If you don't vote, you don't matter. — Sean Penn

Sense of self, and the way one shares it, is perhaps the most valuable and poetic gift in the arsenal of one's life and craft. — Sean Penn

Selling a movie feels like a hustle to every bone in my body. Many actors have careers dominated by modeling. They're all over the place. It turns me off. People who are good at what they do ought to practice something bigger. — Sean Penn

Jon Krakauer had documented it very accurately and very well but this kid made a real impression on people, and likewise they on him. To talk to them was very moving in many cases because they talk about him like they saw him yesterday. In most cases they knew this kid for a couple of weeks in their whole life and he just lasted with them. — Sean Penn

I can always see light in any situation. It's just the way I'm made. — Sean Penn

If there's anything disgusting about the movie business, it's the whoredom of my peers. — Sean Penn

I'm not good at talking to strangers, whether they're sick children or they're - I'm just not good. I'm shy with it. — Sean Penn

I regret my El Chapo interview didn't spark debate about the war on drugs. — Sean Penn

You're always having to live more to fuel something new. It's an obligation to yourself and to the audience. The personal baggage that comes with being a known actor just adds to that struggle. — Sean Penn

There's not a lot of good movies being made. — Sean Penn

I am a Justin Timberlake fan. — Sean Penn

You try to do your best at what you're getting paid for. — Sean Penn

The one thing you can count on in Hollywood - across the board - is cowardice. — Sean Penn

Haiti, like any place, has its security problems; it has a great challenge in terms of establishing a kind of globally acceptable rule of law. — Sean Penn

I'm not going to recommend recklessness but somewhere just short of it - testing yourself and proactively pursuing a rite of passage has become necessary because in western developed countries we've become very comfort-addicted. — Sean Penn

So if we have anything original to offer, it's to speak from our own life about the society we're in. — Sean Penn

Hal Holbrook was in one of my first television movies when I was about 18 or 19. He'd made such a strong impression on me and a lasting one in terms of what being an actor was. — Sean Penn

I still think photographers should be lashed out at. They should be put in a cage where you can poke them with a stick for a quarter. But not in a hostile way, just for giggles. They really are on the attack against mankind; it's a disease. They should be helped somewhere. But I'd still like to poke them with a stick. — Sean Penn

Oh, I'm a big-mouth. I said a lot of things. — Sean Penn

Turning one's back on stardom might be the highest form of common sense. One that I would aspire to be more complete with. — Sean Penn

I am a limousine liberal. — Sean Penn

In between, I go broke because I seem to do movies where you're not paid a lot as an actor. — Sean Penn

That difference do you think you can make, one man in all this madness? — Sean Penn

Anger can be a problem, but it has tremendous potential, too. It's just figuring out what to do with it. — Sean Penn

I've always operated under the notion that audiences don't always know when they're being lied to, but that they always know when they're being told the truth. — Sean Penn

'The Indian Runner' was easy. It had been incubating in me for eight years, and by the time I sat down to write the thing, I had all the pictures in my head. — Sean Penn

I lost a friend I was blessed to have. My thoughts are with the family of President Chavez and the people of Venezuela. — Sean Penn

I just want real creative freedom without worrying about, you know, car payments. — Sean Penn

The heartbreak that it might not happen wasn't something that I wanted to face with any more weight. Then, when I got the call to go ahead I never thought for a second as I was approaching it who I would get - that would come later. Again, I think the idea was that I now had the rights to make the movie and I can start writing it but if I have to wait another 10 years before I find an actor that's right for it, I'd be very happy to do that. — Sean Penn

Whatever one considers art to be, there is in many people a hunger to express themselves creatively and to feel authentic in doing that. — Sean Penn

I can make a better living as an actor than I can as a director. Though I certainly would prefer to be directing movies. — Sean Penn

When you act in a film, you're inevitably surrounded by people you didn't choose, right down to the set painter. I like being able to pick the family I'm waking up to in the morning that's going to make this group effort to tell a story that applies to what's interesting to me at that stage in my life. — Sean Penn

Fulfilling what you start is why you start something. — Sean Penn

I think we all have light and dark inside us. — Sean Penn

That on a romantic level, if you feel it about somebody and it's pure, it means that they do too. — Sean Penn

Craft comes into acting later rather than sooner. I was somebody who had to learn through a process - a natural actor doesn't need to. — Sean Penn

I've never really been one to get what they call stage fright so much. — Sean Penn

I think life's an irrational obsession. — Sean Penn

I live in the energy and rhythm of the character. To some degree, that's true of every actor I've worked with. — Sean Penn

I think that I've still not been successful at playing the role of the retired actor, and I'd like to work on that. — Sean Penn

Well, look at all of these summer blockbusters. You can't help but laugh a little, because you've already seen a lot of these movies 482 times. — Sean Penn

Whatever I was able to do with those experiences certainly contribute to whatever I'm able to do as a director. The corruption in that is that most of what I acted in the last 10 years was to steal film school time from these guys. Those were the people I thought I could learn from as a director. — Sean Penn

A SWAT team surrounded my house and came in every door. But it happened because on the day that we split up, Madonna developed a concern that if she were to return to the house, she would get a very severe haircut. — Sean Penn

The major studios are by and large banks, and they give you what is by and large a loan to make a movie. Like banks, they want their money back plus. — Sean Penn

As a foreign worker in Haiti, speaking for myself, speaking for the workers, our organization is about 95 percent Haitian, but even foreign workers driving through, we have had very minimal security issues. — Sean Penn

If you're willing to put two thoughts into a picture then you're already ahead of the game. — Sean Penn

Yeah, I had actually tried to stop acting before I made Dead Man Walking. — Sean Penn

Yeah, I had a tremendous time shooting in Nebraska. I like that state a lot, all over it. — Sean Penn

Haiti kind of gets a hold of you. — Sean Penn

A lot of critics sometimes get into analyzing the way actors direct versus non-actors directing. And they really always miss it. It's one of those things where, by not being practitioners, they just came up with something that made sense to them. — Sean Penn

In school, I was a genius of the year preceding the year I was in, every year. — Sean Penn

On any movie I'm involved with, I say what I think. — Sean Penn

Venezuela and its revolution will endure under the proven leadership of Vice President Maduro, — Sean Penn