Marlon Quotes & Sayings

'Paranormal 1' scared me because I didn't know if it was real or what. 'Blair Witch' was kind of scary for the same reason. It takes the voyeur element away and makes you think, 'Oh crap, this could really happen to me.' — Marlon Wayans

Drunkenness was a communal and personal pleasure at once, a miserable state only to those not drinking. Sobriety to him was a cruel attack of conscience masking itself as awareness. If sober people were so aware, how come they only spoke truth when drunk? Give him the romance of a drunkard over the indignation of a teetotaler any day. — Marlon James

If there's anything unsettling to the stomach, it's watching actors on television talk about their personal lives. — Marlon Brando

When dog kill puss, and puss kill dog, the only one happy is the john-crow. — Marlon James

I hate that just because I live here I'm supposed to live politics. And there's nothing you can do. If you don't live politics, politics will leave you. — Marlon James

You sure you can handle big woman chat, pickney? You sure you ready for that journey? You think good before you answer. Because some people about to forget that me be the head bloodcloth nigger in here. Now, go peel two potato and don't draw me tongue out in this place. — Marlon James

Ask most kids about details about Auschwitz or about how the American Indians were assassinated as a people and they don't know anything about it. They don't want to know anything. Most people just want their beer or their soap opera or their lullaby. — Marlon Brando

But sometimes when you're too careful it just turns into a different kind of carelessness. — Marlon James

But the people I admire have always been people like Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson and Jack Lemmon. — Evan Jones

I was the nerd. Because I was reading. I wasn't into sports. I was really into art. Very geekish about comics. Assumed gay. — Marlon James

I don't stretch my hand out anymore, but I never get tired of waiting for the next magic. — Marlon Brando

The military mind has one aim, and that is to make soldiers react as mechanically as possible. They want the same predictability in a man as they do in a telephone or a machine gun, and they train their soldiers to act as a unit, not as individuals. — Marlon Brando

If reggae comes from another country, you can have the relationship to reggae that I have to rock. But it's something I grew up with. It's probably something I appreciate more now. In the '80s, I was all about New Wave and synth pop - New Order and Depeche Mode and Eurythmics and Michael Jackson and tons and tons and tons of Prince. — Marlon James

While they'd be setting up shots, suddenly, there were 17 make-up chicks, just listening to Marlon telling these amazing stories that were probably lies. He was a fascinating individual. I learned a lot from him. — Johnny Depp

Three year in prison and a dick is just another thing to put up your ass. — Marlon James

Acting, in general, is something most people think they're incapable of, but they do it from morning to night. The subtlest acting I've ever seen is by ordinary people trying to show they feel something they don't, or trying to hide something. It's something everyone learns at an early age. — Marlon Brando

I grew up watching Marlon Brando, Christopher Walken, Robert de Niro, and Al Pacino and even Robert Duvall and was impressed by their caliber of work. — Cole Hauser

With parody, you're referencing and sending up a particular genre, and mostly your material is going to be taken out of that genre. — Marlon Wayans

It is necessary to constantly remind ourselves that we are not an abomination. — Marlon Riggs

You were Marlon Brando, I was Steve McQueen, you were K.Y. Jelly, I was Vaseline. — Leonard Cohen

I had to read Wuthering Heights for English and I never enjoyed a book in all my life as much as that one. — Marlon Brando

The most realistic blood I've seen is when Marlon Brando gets beat up in On The Waterfront. — George A. Romero

So much of my life has been about self-effacement, pretense, masquerading, concealment, and indirection. — Marlon Riggs

Silence kills the soul; it diminishes its possibilities to rise and fly and explore. Silence withers what makes you human. The soul shrinks, until it's nothing. — Marlon Riggs

Lars is played by Ryan Gosling, the Prince of Tics, whose idea of acting is to wait a few beats before reacting to other people's remarks, as if acting were merely a matter of adhering to the seven-second delay rule. Jack Nicholson has made a career out of doing this sort of thing, as did Paul Newman, as did Marlon Brando (who the other two learned it from), but they didn't do it all the time and they were more fun to look at ... Lars And The Real Girl joins a number of other recent films in the category of motion pictures where the director doesn't know that his protagonist is unsympathetic. — Joe Queenan

When I lie on the beach there naked, which I do sometimes, and I feel the wind coming over me and I see the stars up above and I am looking into this very deep, indescribable night, it is something that escapes my vocabulary to describe. Then I think: 'God, I have no importance. Whatever I do or don't do, or what anybody does, is not more important than the grains of sand that I am lying on, or the coconut that I am using for my pillow.' So I really don't think in the long sense. — Marlon Brando

There's a line in the picture where he (Johnny - The Wild One) snarls, 'Nobody tells me what to do.' That's exactly how I've felt all my life. — Marlon Brando

If Fred Astaire is the Cary Grant of dance, I'm the Marlon Brando. — Gene Kelly

I used to go over to Gene Kelly's house and play volleyball, and Paul Newman and Marlon Brando were always there. You kind of took it for granted because I was 20, 21, 22, and they were a bit older - well, Gene certainly was. But it was just part of daily living. They were in the same profession, and you didn't think that much about it. — Joan Collins

Marlon once said to me about being an actor: Can you imagine going to work every day and pretending to be someone else? — Mike Medavoy

I'd like to see a ghost. It would confirm there's an afterlife. — Marlon Wayans

Bad feeling is a country no woman want to visit. So they take good feeling any which way it come. Sometime that good feeling come by taking on a different kind of bad feeling. — Marlon James

Never confuse the size of your paycheck with the size of your talent. — Marlon Brando

If you've never known love, you never know where it is, you don't know what it looks like or it sounds like, you look in the most unlikely places to find it. — Marlon Brando

Devil has his part to play. — Marlon James

I was the Marlon Brando of my generation. — Bette Davis

To hug Toni Burgess and Sandy Wilson, the Devil Girlz we'd met in Taylor Creek, Oregon. Correction: former Devil Girlz. There was no sign of leather. Instead Toni was in a dress and had soccer-mom hair, and she said she was going back to teaching school. Sandy just looked sweet. More people were introduced: lawyers for both sides, and His Honor Marlon Sykes, a judge — James Patterson

You need to be lucky in life, but it's also what you do with your luck. — Marlon Wayans

I like All Saints. They make great leathers. I love Hugo Boss, especially the suits. I like James Perse for T-shirts, and Supra and Radii for sneakers. And God Is in the Details. — Marlon Wayans

- Little pussy like me still have bigger cock than the two of them, she say. She pull the gag out of Sacco mouth. - What you gonna do, Miss — Marlon James

[Marlon] Brando's a giant on every level. When he acts it's as if he landed from another planet. A planet where they produce great actors. — Al Pacino

I think family is key, and if you have love for family, then you have love for others - and you have unity as a people. — Marlon Wayans

Marlon Brando was the absolute opposite of everything they told me he was going to be, which is that he was a testy guy who wants to know that he's in control of everything. But, that's not who Marlon was. No matter what he did, the most important thing on his mind was justice. — Johnny Depp

People with a plan see and wait for the right time. — Marlon James

Hate and love be closer cousin than like and dislike. — Marlon James

Dead people never stop talking. — Marlon James

The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis. — Marlon Brando

My first novel, 'John Crow's Devil,' freed me up to write about the past, and 'The Book of Night Women' freed me up to have a book totally based on voice and being very spontaneous. — Marlon James

Someone I met years ago explained to me the difference between a personality and an actor, a personality being Eddie Murphy or Roseanne Barr, and an actor being Morgan Freeman and Alfre Woodard or Marlon Brando. — Orlando Jones

I used to watch all my friends play with G.I. Joes. I couldn't afford them. — Marlon Wayans

My dad was my hero when I was a young boy. And then it's a toss-up between Han Solo, the New Zealand All Blacks Rugby team, and Marlon Brando. — Martin Henderson

I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream. That's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor and surviving. — Marlon Brando

I don't mind that I'm fat. You still get the same money. — Marlon Brando

I'll fight Lloyd Honeyghan for nothing if the price is right. — Marlon Starling

We're not big on irony in Jamaica, sarcasm and double-talk. We tend to say things plainly, sometimes to the point of boredom. — Marlon James

There are so many things to talk about between black people, Hispanic people, white people, gay people, men, women, it's all based on fear. We all have fears, this thing that stops us from embracing as we are one. We are never going to be one. People are messed up, but humor lets us see how ignorant we can be. — Marlon Wayans

Before I made it big I worked as a dishwasher, washing dishes in this place called Dishwasher House where people could just come in and do whatever they wanted to the dishes and we had to clean them with our hands till they bled. A lot of struggling actors worked there-Downey Jr., Joaquin Phoenix, Damon Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Keenen Ivory Wayans-and we actually all kind of wish we still did. — William H. Macy

Worse, you all present tense and have to deal with sudden past tense all around you. It's like realizing somebody rob you a year late. — Marlon James

I've got Democratic skin, but a Republican pocket. — Marlon Wayans

A lot of time, I'd spell things in standard English instead of phonetically because I want people to understand what's going on. It's also very lyrical, and the great thing about lyrical prose is even when you're not totally sure of the words, you can be swayed by the musicality of it. — Marlon James

The close-up says everything. — Marlon Brando

It's not just the lawlessness. It's the grabbing of a myth and making it theirs, like a reggae singer dropping new lyrics 'pon di old version. And if a western needs an O.K. Corral, an O.K. Corral needs a Dodge City. Kingston, where bodies sometimes drop like flies, fits the description a little too well. — Marlon James

Well, it was interesting because when I was going to do it the first time in my head was Leonardo DiCaprio [for Chris] and Marlon Brando was going to play the character that Hal Holbrook eventually played. But then when it wasn't to be and there was no promise that it ever would be I think some part of me didn't want to attach specifics to it anymore - actors or anything else - because I wanted to see it made that much more badly. — Sean Penn

I was 160lbs when I started and I went up to 195lbs. There were no steroids. But it was hard work, dedication, hitting the gym. You kind of see it. — Marlon Wayans

I also know that too many people talk too much, especially the American, who never shut up, just switch to a laugh every time he talk 'bout you, and it sound strange how he put your name beside people we never hear 'bout, Allende Lumumba, a name that sound like a country that Kunta Kinte come from. The American, most of the time hide him eye with sunglasses like he is a preacher from America come to talk to black people. Him and the Cuban come sometimes together, sometimes on they own, and when one talk the other always quiet. The Cuban don't fuck with guns because guns always need to be needed, him say. — Marlon James

I had to do the full body shave for the first coupla weeks of 'White Chicks,' then I said, 'You know what? I'm just gonna be a hairy white chick 'cause this is too much! — Marlon Wayans

I have eyes like those of a dead pig. — Marlon Brando

Listen.
Dead people never stop talking. Maybe because death is not death at all, just a detention after school. You know where you're coming from and you're always returning from it. You know where you're going though you never seem to get there and you're just dead. Dead. — Marlon James

Now, Marlon and I - for some reason, even today - even today, we can't say two words to each other. We really can't talk to each other. You know, I say to him - Marlon can't talk. I mean, he'd talk to you. But he can't talk. — Anthony Quinn

Hollywood is run by Jews, it is owned by Jews ... — Marlon Brando

Regret is useless in life. It's in the past. All we have is now. — Marlon Brando

I thank you for not snoring. — Marlon Brando

All the time she's silent. All the women were silent except the white one talking to Trent. If it wasn't for the red, green and gold and that the skirts are often denim, I'd think I was surrounded by Muslim women. — Marlon James

You see and wait, — Marlon James

A larceny and a missing. Me ears-ring missing and she larcen it. That gal just buss 'way like kite. She is a little duty gyal, that one. Never take no instruction from her mother. From she born, me say, this little one, this little one going turn slut like her auntie. Sometime me wonder if is fi her own or fi me. Anyway, she gone from Wednesday morning. Leave out before the sun even rise and is not the first time neither. But this time she take me ears-ring and me Julia of Paris shoes. Me no business bout the shoes. Imagine, she take off to go school from four in the morning? I mean to say, who love school so much that they leave four hour early? Me can smoke in here? — Marlon James

If a man call himself Rasta today, by next week that is him speaking prophecy. He don't have to be too smart either, just know one or two hellfire and brimstone verse from the Bible. Or just claim it come from Leviticus since nobody ever read Leviticus. This is how you know. Nobody who get to the end of Leviticus can still take that book seriously. Even in a book full of it, that book is mad as shit. Don't lie with man as with woman, sure I can run with that reasoning. But don't eat crab? — Marlon James

I hate people like that, people you have to protect while they keep hurting you. — Marlon James

An actor is at most a poet and at least an entertainer. — Marlon Brando

[Marlon] Brando was the only guy who could step out of that shadow at the end of that movie and be worth the wait. — Roger Ebert

I know this'll sound obnoxious, but acting was very much an accident for me. I didn't have, like, posters of Marlon Brando in my bedroom when I was growing up. — Michael Shannon

I want to be believable in anything I take on. — Marlon Wayans

One of the greatest compliments you can ever get is when you make fun of a certain sect of people and they are laughing the hardest. When we did 'Men on Film' on 'In Living Color,' gay men wrote in how much they loved it. — Marlon Wayans

Because every man who fight monster become a monster too, and there be at least one woman in Kingston who think me is the killer of all things name hope. — Marlon James

If you could cross a lion and a monkey, that's what I'd be, because monkeys are funny and lions are strong. — Marlon Wayans

him swinging the baton and knocking out my side teeth and cracking my temple so that I can never hear good out of that ear again and saying let that be a lesson to never take you dutty, stinking, ghetto self uptown again. And I see them and I wait. But — Marlon James

Can't play it safe when nowhere safe anymore — Marlon James

Seem that if baby get left in manger he would scratch up, bite up and dead by the third day. But white people think this be the greatest thing. The baby grow up and they kill him, and white people think this be even greater. It make plenty sense that white people would get so much mirth and joy out of this 'cause nobody kill for fun like backra. — Marlon James

I worked with Marlon Wayans on the show 'They Wayans Brothers,' and we hit it off. One thing about Marlon, when he casts a movie or a TV show, he expects you to bring it. You've got to be ready to improv, because Marlon will say anything, and you've got to be ready to come back. — Kym Whitley

One of the things I fucking hate about my fellow Americans: whenever they fly to a foreign country, first thing they do, they try to find as much of America as they can get their hands on, even if it's food in the shitty cafeteria. — Marlon James

I always feel that the best roles are written for white guys. — Marlon Wayans

Dodie: "Mama, Jamie's up on the hill and he's f***g a goat!"
Mama: "Well, it's Jamie's goat, ain't it?"
-Peter Manso illustrates the brash wit pervasive in the Brando family with this exchange between Dodie Brando, Marlon's mother, and her mother in-law. — Peter Manso

The dream didn't leave, people just don't know a nightmare when they right in the middle of one. — Marlon James

Marlon was more of a formal zoo director type. — Jim Fowler

Mafia is the best example of capitalism we have. — Marlon Brando

If it no go so, it go near so. - Jamaican proverb — Marlon James

Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Sean Connery and Robert Redford, Mel Gibson - at least in the Road Warrior films - and Harrison Ford are among my favorite actors. Meryl Streep, Jane Fonda, Sally Field, Deborah Winger, Jessica Lange, and of course, Shirley MacLaine, are among the women. — Frederick Lenz

- Do you know what we mean by Cold War?
- War don't have no temperature. — Marlon James

In being a loving son, I suppose I was trying to become a loved son. — Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando. The finest actor who ever lived. He was my idol when I was 13. He's done enough work to last two lifetimes. Everything I do, I think: Can Brando play this with me? — Barbra Streisand

You never know when people's dreams are connected to you before you're gone and then there's nothing to do, but watch them die in a different way, slow, limb by limb, system by system. — Marlon James