Kiefer Quotes & Sayings

I had never gone to college, I left school at a really early age, and all of a sudden I've got six really great friends hanging out with me every night. And we were a really tight group, and we just had an absolute blast. — Kiefer Sutherland

When I was younger, my whole sense of self-worth was based on whether or not I was working, which was awful. And I had a baby at 20 years old, so it wasn't just about me. At around the age of 30 there was a stretch where I wasn't working - certainly not on anything I liked, anyway - and I started to do other things. — Kiefer Sutherland

Kiefer Sutherland has agreed to serve 48 days in jail for his DUI convictions. That's 245 months in Jack Bauer years. — Chelsea Handler

You can't ask the press to service you with everything that they have and not expect some of the other stuff in return if you're going to live your life like I have. — Kiefer Sutherland

But we should also not forget the difference between what first motivated me and the work that is the result. — Anselm Kiefer

I never see a forest that does not bear a mark or a sign of history. — Anselm Kiefer

Yes, I do believe that there is a cause and effect and a ripple effect upon everything everybody does, and they have positive consequences and negative consequences. If you start to focus on the kind of minutia of that, it's really quite extraordinary. — Kiefer Sutherland

I'm not that complicated as an actor. I have a formula in which I work, yeah. But not like Sean Penn does. Sean is one of the few actors I know who can work like that, actually becoming the character he is playing, and get consistent results. I don't believe you can ever be someone else. You manifest different levels of your own personality to come up with a character. — Kiefer Sutherland

There's a confidence that comes from youth and not knowing better. But there comes a point, as an actor, when you do know better, and that is when the fear starts. — Kiefer Sutherland

I like chatting with people. If people ask me a direct question, I give them a direct answer and I feel I've always done that with the press. — Kiefer Sutherland

My whole mood or sense can change by virtue of the music that I'm listening to. It really does affect me on a visceral and emotional level. — Kiefer Sutherland

Some days I'm in better control and can navigate my way through stuff, and other days, not so much. — Kiefer Sutherland

My focus on 9/11 was on the victims - in the towers, in the planes - and all that loss. — Kiefer Sutherland

The book, the idea of a book or the image of a book, is a symbol of learning, of transmitting knowledge.. I make my own books to find my way through the old stories. — Anselm Kiefer

I think just in general there's a bunch of films that mattered to me that didn't reach their potential, and on some level you have to assume responsibility for that. And I think over the years that gets difficult. — Kiefer Sutherland

I was interested in transcendence from a very early age. I was interested in what was over there, what was behind life. So when I had my first communion I was very disappointed. I had expected something amazing and surprising and spiritual. Instead all I got was a bicycle. That wasn't what I was after at all. — Anselm Kiefer

My mother's five-foot-two, and I'll be honest with you - she's the only person I'm scared of. — Kiefer Sutherland

I believe in empty spaces; they're the most wonderful thing. — Anselm Kiefer

History speaks to artists. It changes the artist's thinking and is constantly reshaping it into different and unexpected images. — Anselm Kiefer

But I believe above all that I wanted to build the palace of my memory, because my memory is my only homeland. — Anselm Kiefer

When, at the end of the 1960s, I became interested in the Nazi era, it was a taboo subject in Germany. No one spoke about it anymore, no more in my house than anywhere else. — Anselm Kiefer

Art is longing. You never arrive, but you keep going in the hope that you will. — Anselm Kiefer

Love is a self-manifested notion depending on how lonely you are - so if you're really attracted to someone, and you're really lonely, I think you can fall in love in an instant. It's all about where you're at. — Kiefer Sutherland

People respond to a guy who is trapped and succeeds on some level and fails on another. — Kiefer Sutherland

I didn't realize that television has gone through immense changes and has become very progressive. — Kiefer Sutherland

And he believed it too, believed, in that moment, that the arrow he had made for himself would continue its long upward motion. As if there was no possibility of return, no aphelion or perihelion to chart the long spiral of his orbit around whatever false burning center he had made.
Know this. That the things that go into the fire are forever changed. That all you have ever done can be measured not by distance but by circumference. That these twin spirals of smoke: they are your life, rising in curls. — Christian Kiefer

I'm running out of time, and a Western is America's answer to a Greek tragedy, so that's what we did. [Kiefer] hired Brad [Mirman] to write the script and he had the ideas, and then he and I did stuff on the script to make it a little cleaner to ourselves. And then, we played it. We were just actors working together, and our DNA must have informed it somehow. Certainly, we came out of it purified a little bit. — Donald Sutherland

Art is difficult. It's not entertainment. — Anselm Kiefer

Say you're watching a TV show. Say it's 24, starring Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer, the angst-ridden lone-wolf federal agent who protects America from terrorism by sooner or later causing the violent death of pretty much everybody he meets. If you study this show carefully, you will notice something curious: Jack Bauer never goes to the bathroom. That's why he's so ridden with angst. — Dave Barry

If I do something that depresses, it's not because I'm depressed, but because political life and history is depressing. — Anselm Kiefer

Change was a scary concept. Whether you were ready for it or not, sometimes it crept up on you, ambushing without warning, and no matter if you wanted it or not, you had to figure out how to accept it and adapt to its insistent nature. — Erica Kiefer

When you're a young actor you like to go for characters with a bit of flair, so in many films I ended up playing the weirdos. I can assure you I'm not a psycho or a criminal or a bully. — Kiefer Sutherland

I've always thought of the western as American storytelling at its best. — Kiefer Sutherland

Commander I believe in God and his son Jesus Christ and because I do I can say this. Private Santiago is dead and that is a tragedy. But he is dead because he had no code. He is dead because he had no honor. And God was watching. — Kiefer Sutherland

When I did 'Young Guns II,' I hung out with Emilio and Kiefer, and I once took a trip with Rob Lowe - we jumped trains. — Christian Slater

I'm always jumping in my seat or gasping during a good horror movie. — Kiefer Sutherland

Most of my career I've spent really nervous. Just about work, getting work and having it in. — Kiefer Sutherland

There are certain moments that you have to hit in a film, like when a character cries. — Kiefer Sutherland

The biggest mistakes I made in my career were when I said, 'If I do this movie, I'll be able to do a couple more movies.' Those are the times I really got ugly. — Kiefer Sutherland

If your ethics in the military, in your training, is going to be counterminded by a one-hour weekly television show, we've got a really big problem. — Kiefer Sutherland

I think the father-son dynamic is interesting. I don't have a male friend who hasn't had some kind of conflict with their dad, and I don't have a male friend who hasn't had some kind of conflict with their son. — Kiefer Sutherland

One of the big draws of the show is here's a guy who is ordinary in a lot of ways but, due to his profession, he's placed in extraordinary situations that he has to make right with action and with thought. That's what is appealing about Jack - he takes charge. — Kiefer Sutherland

I believe art has to take responsibility but it should not give up being art. — Anselm Kiefer

I've always said, 'Besides Kiefer Sutherland, I talked on a cell phone more than any other actor on a TV show.' — Kevin Connolly

You know, I wish I wasn't so young when I made some of my movies, because I thought that's what the rest of my life was going to be like and I'd have all the time in the world to enjoy it. It wasn't and I didn't. — Kiefer Sutherland

I've always traveled with a picture of my daughter from 1989, her kindergarten school picture, that has 'I love you, Daddy' written on it. She's always made fun of me because I never changed that picture out. It's like my resistance to her getting older. It was the first thing she'd ever written to me and it means the world to me. — Kiefer Sutherland

I couldn't see my father's films because they were restricted and we didn't have videos or DVDs back then. — Kiefer Sutherland

I was so disappointed [with movie Forsaken], but maybe I hadn't talked enough with the director. I don't know. But, Kiefer worked it out. Kiefer took it and re-edited it. I don't know whether he talks about that. He's probably more discreet than I am because Jon is a friend of his. Now, it fulfills what I was hoping for, and what we were working on and doing. — Donald Sutherland

I am a bit obsessive about tidiness. I need to make my bed in the morning and leave it perfectly made up. — Kiefer Sutherland

When we shoot 24, there are so many things I have to worry about, from the script to technical things to my performance, that I don't have a second to be bored or take anything for granted. We produce 24 hours of film a season, which is like making 12 movies. — Kiefer Sutherland

I was 20 when my daughter was born, and making all these plans during my wife's pregnancy. I was going to be the perfect father. Once she was born, it was suddenly, 'Oh, my God! I'm a parent!' — Kiefer Sutherland

The writers keep managing to turn the show in on itself, coming up with something that's well thought-out and miraculous. — Kiefer Sutherland

I don't care what you meant to do. I really don't.
I only care about what you actually do. That's important. The rest of it is just a bunch of bull shit.
--- Grace. — Christian Kiefer

I feel extraordinarily peaceful when I'm watching the sun set. — Kiefer Sutherland

What I ended up doing was kind of crafting an idea for a story, presenting it to a writer - a dear friend of mine, Brad Mirman - and he ended up writing a beautiful script. I should've done that a lot earlier. — Kiefer Sutherland

When I saw Virginia Woolf, somewhere between the first and second acts, someone I had known as my mother became somebody else. — Kiefer Sutherland

I'm a huge fan of Canadian rock-and-roll. When I was growing up, Rush came out with a record called Hemispheres, and I must have listened to that record for two years straight. Even when I was asleep I had it on. So, yeah, whenever I hear a Rush tune, the first thing I think of is Toronto. — Kiefer Sutherland

If you're going to break cinema, film, and movies apart, very rarely to you get the opportunity to even think that you've been a part of cinema. — Kiefer Sutherland

History is formed by the people, those who have power and those without power. Each one of us makes history. — Anselm Kiefer

I did a play called Throne of Straw when I was 11, at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles. It became really clear to me at that point that I enjoyed acting more than any other experience I was having. — Kiefer Sutherland

Not content, but the road the artist takes, is the interesting part. — Anselm Kiefer

When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not. — Anselm Kiefer

When I wasn't the flavor of the week or month or day, those were hard times. — Kiefer Sutherland

Westerns just thematically, as a genre, have kind of a few tent poles that I really admire, and one of them is this perception that life was simpler back then. And with that perception goes that people were good or people were bad. You survived by your strengths or you perished by your weaknesses. — Kiefer Sutherland

I am of the opinion that there are artists and non-artists. I think that this is the way it always was and always will be. I do not believe that we are in the center of the world. It is possible that there are gods who do not relate to human. As an artist, I believe that it is possible to depict these forces. — Anselm Kiefer

Kiefer Sutherland is a crazy jerk on '24,' but you love him because he gets the job done. And I think that that goes for a lot of action stars, I mean Steven Segal is a jerk, but you want to watch him because, eventually, he's a jerk who can beat up bad people. — Paul Scheer

I had an unbelievable experience on '24'. We shot 198 episodes, and I was as excited about shooting the 198th as I was the first. — Kiefer Sutherland

I wasn't trying to do a play or do what Kevin Spacey did. I was trying to do my own thing. — Kiefer Sutherland

There are two things that Jack Bauer never does. Show mercy, and go to the bathroom. — Kiefer Sutherland

I remember being really grateful that David Lynch had actually even thought of casting me, because I was a huge fan of his. — Kiefer Sutherland

I photograph artists, and some of them are very well known, but if you ask the average man on the street, 'Do you like Anselm Kiefer?' He would stare at you with a blank stare, because these are not celebrities. They are celebrated in a specific circle. — Anton Corbijn

Without her, part of my soul was missing. My heart had left with her, when she moved with Henry here, putting half the planet between us, making me wait for the rare phone calls. — Nicole Kiefer

I've made films that I've given all I had to, that no one has seen. The bottom line is I want to work and I want someone to enjoy it. — Kiefer Sutherland

Art really is something very difficult. It is difficult to make, and it is sometimes difficult for the viewer to understand. It is difficult to work out what is art and what is not art. — Anselm Kiefer

I've wanted to work with my father for 30 years, and I'm really grateful that I finally had the opportunity, and it ended up - the experience and, I believe, the film - better than I could ever have hoped for. — Kiefer Sutherland

As an artist you have to find something that deeply interests you. It's not enough to make art that is about art, to look at Matisse and Picasso and say, how can I paint like them? You have to be obsessed by something that can't come out in any other way, then the other things - the skill and technique - will follow. — Anselm Kiefer

'24' and 20th Century Fox and Sky TV are not responsible for training the U.S. military. It is not our job to do. To me, this is almost as absurd as saying, 'The Sopranos' supports the mafia, and by virtue of that, HBO supports the mafia.' — Kiefer Sutherland

Ruins, for me, are the beginning. With the debris, you can construct new ideas. They are symbols of a beginning. — Anselm Kiefer

Romania is an interesting place because I think it has been abused, on so many different levels. — Kiefer Sutherland

I might have been born into a very literal sense of chaos, but in fact that state is true of all of us. — Anselm Kiefer

I would love to do '24' until I was 60, but I don't think anybody would accept it. — Kiefer Sutherland

There are aspects of '24' where I love its politics and aspects where I hate them. — Kiefer Sutherland

I've done some stupid things. You just have to take responsibility, go, That was embarrassing, and move forward as best you can. — Kiefer Sutherland

I am interested in reconstructing symbols. It's about connecting with an older knowledge and trying to discover continuities in why we search for heaven, — Anselm Kiefer

I think that the day you've figured out the differences between women and men is the day that you're no longer attracted to women. It's the difference that is so fantastic and frustrating and angering, and really sexy. — Kiefer Sutherland

As a child I had no toys; our house was bombed, but there were lots of bricks. Ruins are wonderful because they are the beginning of something new, you can do something with them. — Anselm Kiefer

Because of my Calvinistic upbringing, I was trained to think that what you do has to have a purpose. — Anselm Kiefer

I guess its time you officially met the lost boys," I said to Daniel.
"Lost boys? You mean like that old Kiefer Sutherland movie?
"What? No, I mean like Peter Pan and the lost boys."
"Is she calling us fairies?" Asked Slade.
"No," Brent said. "She means the lost boys that never wanted to grow up, and got into mischief with Peter Pan."
"Still sounds like fairies to me." Slade crossed his tattooed arms in front of his chest.
"Still sounds like that Kiefer Sutherland movie to me." Daniel smirked.
"We were in the play together, like, seven years ago. You were mad because my mom made you wear tights, but you wanted to be a pirate."
Daniel held his hand up. "Partial amnesia here, remember? I must have blocked out any and all recollections associations with said tights."
Brent, Zach, and Ryan laughed. Slade almost cracked a smile.


~ Grace, Daniel, and The Lost Boys — Bree Despain

I grew up in a forest. It's like a room. It's protected. Like a cathedral ... it is a place between heaven and earth. — Anselm Kiefer

I think one of the things I was most interested in finding out was how differently we approached our work. And my reality was that we didn't approach it very differently at all, which was funny. — Kiefer Sutherland

Art maybe the only space where an indvidual can be utterly free to question himself, as well as his relationship to his God — Anselm Kiefer

The most significant piece of advice my father gave me early on about acting was, don't get caught acting. Really believe in what you're doing and then commit to it. Even if it feels uncomfortable, even if you feel that you're gonna look like an ass. It's all acting, but find the truth in a moment as opposed to just pretending you have and rather than trying to act your way out of it. — Kiefer Sutherland

Buying art is not understanding art. — Anselm Kiefer

I've always been shocked that people that I'm actually flying with say, 'Oh, I feel safer on the plane with you.' I'm thinking, 'You must not watch the show because everybody around me gets killed.' — Kiefer Sutherland

What does the artist do? He draws connections. He ties the invisible threads between things. He dives into history, be it the history of mankind, the geological history of the Earth or the beginning and end of the manifest cosmos. — Anselm Kiefer

Isn't it funny? You hear a phone ring and it could be anybody. But, a ringing phone has to be answered doesn't it? — Kiefer Sutherland

Daemon cursed again and I moved, blocking him. "Who does that?" Daemon demanded.Heat rolled off his body. "Actually, Kiefer Sutherland did. In the original Buffy movie," he explained. When I continued to gape at him, he grimaced. "It was on TV a few nights ago. He threw one at Buffy and she caught it.""That was Donald Sutherland - the dad," Daemon corrected, much to my surprise.Blake shrugged"Same difference."
"I'm not Buffy!" I yelled. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

My mother was an extraordinary theater actor in Canada, and when I would finish school, I would go to the theater. I would do my homework, we would have dinner there, she would do her play, and then me and my sister would go home. So I grew up in it that way. — Kiefer Sutherland

I've had some amazing people in my life. Look at my father - he came from a small fishing village of five hundred people and at six foot four with giant ears and a kind of very odd expression, thought he could be a movie star. So go figure, you know? — Kiefer Sutherland

There are a lot of movies I'd like to throw away. That's not to say that I went in with that attitude. Any film I ever started, I went in with all the hope and best intentions in the world, but some films just don't work. — Kiefer Sutherland