Nicholson Quotes & Sayings

When the world begins to overwhelm you, it is because you are looking too far from your own path. Do not grieve for those you do not know. Do not suffer for those you cannot help. Do not take into your heart the millions around the world. Compassion is learned in the context of your individual life. Respond fully and openly to those who present themselves to you. They are the guardians and guideposts of your unique lessons. — Zoe Nicholson

The great thing about novels is that you can be as unshy as you want to be. I'm very polite in person. I don't want to talk about startling or upsetting things with people. — Nicholson Baker

I'm not Jack Nicholson. I'm not Brando. But I do mumble. — Benicio Del Toro

These self-appointed deacons in the Church of Latter-Day American Literature seem to regard generosity (of words) with suspicion, texture with dislike, and any broad literary stroke with outright hate. The result is a strange and arid literary climate where a meaningless little fingernail paring like Nicholson Baker's Vox becomes an object of fascinated debate and dissection, and a truly ambitious American novel like Matthew's Heart of the Country is all but ignored. — Stephen King

I'm content with the fact that I made a decent effort. That's what I've always worried about: that I wouldn't try hard enough. — Jack Nicholson

I have never lied to you, I have always told you some version of the truth. — Jack Nicholson

Counterweights - brushed — Nicholson Baker

I was particularly proud of my performance as the Joker. I considered it a piece of pop art. — 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

services as a tree trimmer.92 In the fall of 1975, while still promoting Cuckoo's Nest, Nicholson played a very small part in his pal Sam Spiegel's production of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon, based on the life of MGM wonder boy Irving Thalberg, who made Metro the dominant — Edward Douglas

In other words, I wouldn't like to be an actor if I could only be real. I like to get wild, behaviorally wild, and it's crazy to think of any form where it's just one way. — Jack Nicholson

The fact that we had independently decided to sweep our apartments on that Sunday afternoon after spending the weekend together, I took as a strong piece of evidence that we were right for each other. And from then on when I read things Samuel Johnson said about the deadliness of leisure and the uplifting effects of industry, I always nodded and thought of brooms. — Nicholson Baker

Imagine. Create. Write. — Donna Nicholson

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

In fact, when they wake up in the morning, they're Jack Nicholson or Robert De Niro or Josh Brolin. And it's built-in, but they think it's all this other stuff. But it's not. They'd be great if they didn't think about their part or if they did think about it. — Woody Allen

I've never lost a friend over work. I come from a small-town environment and I remember my childhood impressions that, if you were a conniver or a fink or whatever, everybody knew about it and you were a louse for the rest of your life. So I never lost those values in some way. — Jack Nicholson

You know Sven? The man who takes care of the gym?' he asked. He waited till he got a nod from Nicholson. 'Well, if Sven dreamed tonight that his dog died, he'd have a very, very bad night's sleep, because he's very fond of that dog. But when he woke up in the morning, everything would be all right. He'd know it was only a dream.'
Nicholson nodded. 'What's the point exactly?'
The point is if his dog really died, it would be exactly the same thing. Only he wouldn't know it. I mean he wouldn't wake up till he died himself. — J.D. Salinger

The latest page I've been working is about the organization of the pantheon of the gods. Who's indebted to whom, how they are related, who screwed whose uncle or grandmother, all of that. — Ben Nicholson

...linen is a fabric that wrinkles like Jack Nicholson's balls without Botox. — Anna Kendrick

Michael [Douglas] was just leaving the TV series The Streets of San Francisco and he said, 'Dad, let me try it.' I thought, 'Well, if I couldn't make it ... ' So, I gave it to him and he got the money, the director and the cast. The biggest disappointment for me, I always wanted to play McMurphy. They got a young actor, Jack Nicholson. I thought, 'Oh God. He will be terrible.' Then I saw the picture and, of course, he was great in it! That was my biggest disappointment that turned out to be one of the things I'm most proud of because my son Michael did it. I couldn't do it, but Michael did it. — Kirk Douglas

The corruption of the American soul is consumerism. — Ben 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

My dad is a Jack Nicholson lookalike and a frustrated performer, my mother's into reading and poetry. I suppose the thing I owe them most is my confidence. — Michael Sheen

Now, why was diagonal cutting better than cutting straight across? Because the corner of a triangularly cut slice gave you an ideal first bite. In the case of rectangular toast, you had to angle the shape into your mouth, as you angle a big dresser through a hall doorway: you had to catch one corner of your mouth with one corner of the toast and then carefully turn the toast, drawing the mouth open with it so that its other edge could clear; only then did you chomp down. Also, with a diagonal slice, most of the tapered bite was situated right up near the front of your mouth, where you wanted it to be as you began to chew; with the rectangular slice, a burdensome fraction was riding out of control high on the dome of the tongue. One subway stop before mine, I concluded that there had been logic behind the progress away from the parallel and toward the diagonal cut, and that the convention was not, as it might first have appeared, merely an affection of short-order cooks. — Nicholson Baker

Then on your tombstone, where you only get a little bit of space to sum up your life, some wax-faced creep chisels a set of meaningless numbers instead of poetry or a secret love or the name of your favorite candy.
In the end, all you get is a few words. — Scott Nicholson

I had twelve years as a Tottenham player under Bill Nicholson and could not have wished to have played for a better manager. I can still hear his wise words in my head when I am out on the training ground as a manager myself. — Joe Kinnear

The nice thing about a protest song is that it takes the complaint, the fussing, the finger-pointing, and gives it an added component of sociable harmony. — Nicholson Baker

I'm often called obsessive, but I don't think I am any more than anyone else. — Nicholson Baker

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

His white admiral's jacket gleamed with medals, nut Loki wasn't exactly wearing it regulation-style. It was open over a black T-shirt featuring Jack Nicholson's face from The Shinnig. The caption read: HEEEERE'S LOKI! — Rick Riordan

A lot of people measure a man by what he's got. I've decided to measure myself by what I can give up. — Geoff Nicholson

When it's over for a woman, it's over. You're not getting an appeal. — Jack Nicholson

Will the time ever come when I am not so completely dependent on thoughts I first had in childhood to furnish the feedstock for my comparisons and analogies and sense of the parallel rhythms of microhistory? Will I reach a point where there will be a good chance, I mean a more than fifty-fifty chance, that any random idea popping back into the foreground of my consciousness will be an idea that first came to me when I was an adult, rather than one I had repeatedly as a child? — Nicholson Baker

Sometimes, despite the fact that you're reading through masses of material, you just can't not think about a certain event, for it seems to capture the reality of the entire situation so much better than any set of statistics. — Nicholson Baker

So what he supposed to do? Grab Bobbie's ax and make like Jack Nicholson in The Shinning? He could see it. Smash, crash, bash: Heeeeeeere's GARDENER! — Stephen King

Martin Scorsese, everything he does, I've got to see. And Jack Nicholson, I've got to see what he does. — Nathaniel Philbrick

Today begins my walk with you. Where you go, I go. Where you stay, I stay. When you sleep, I will sleep. When you rise, I will rise. I will pass my days within the sound of your voice, and my nights within the reach of your hand. And none shall come between us. - Manth Vow — William Nicholson

Well, a younger woman is a type, but not necessarily a type for me. And what is a younger woman? I mean, I'm pretty old. Almost everyone is younger. — Jack Nicholson

I remember, around age ten, beholding the scene in The Shining in which the hot young woman whom Jack Nicholson is lewdly embracing in the haunted hotel bathroom ages rapidly in his arms, screeching from nubile chick to putrefying corpse within seconds. I understood that the scene was supposed to represent some kind of primal horror. This was The Shining, after all. But the image of that decaying, cackling crone, her arms outstretched in desire toward the man who is backing away, has stayed with me for three decades, as a type of friend. She's part baths-ghost, part mad-Naomi. She didn't get the memo about being beyond wanting or being wanted. Or perhaps she just means to scare the shit out of him, which she does. — Maggie Nelson

Student journeys which were important to me were Sicily, Greece, and Egypt, where I really saw these buildings, and that is where you're able to grasp what things mean. — Ben Nicholson

Don't look so scared. — 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

The Enneagram is not a system of personality, as it is so often presented, but rather a definition of character fixation. The same character fixation can manifest across a full range of personalities. Jack Nicholson and Slobodan Milosevic have the same character fixation but different personalities. — Eli Jaxon-Bear

Most good novelists have been women or homosexuals. The novel is the triumphant evolved creation, one increasingly has to think, of these two groups, who have cooperated more closely in this domain than in any other. — Nicholson Baker

Who cares about my cock? It'll fend for itself. — Nicholson Baker

Believe it or not, I supported Richard Nixon on the issue of presidential privilege. How could anyone conceive of being the president of the United States and think that every single thing that you say or do can become a part of the public record? It just seems so stupid to me. — Jack Nicholson

I look for a director with a script he likes a lot, but I'm probably after the directors more than anything. — Jack Nicholson

I don't know if this is a true statistic, but I heard somewhere that there are three times as many single women over forty as single men. That's what we got from the women's movement. The chickens have come home to roost. — Jack Nicholson

The myth of writer as, like, Asperger-style misanthrope, or, like, the Jack Nicholson, 'As Good As It Gets' - it just doesn't work, because writers, in order to write good characters, need to understand people. You need to understand your audience. You need to have so much empathy you could almost encourage empathy in others. — Patrick Rothfuss

We write to know we are not alone — William Nicholson

Politics are beautiful. They enable a community to live collectively with one another. It's not about stabbing each other in the back; it's about enabling people to reach their dreams and pursue happiness. — Ben Nicholson

You can't handle the truth! — Jack Nicholson

Because men are sentimental over women they will throw away military advantages, and hesitate and weigh the chances of failure when attack is their best or only hope, and lose their opportunity because they "have to think of the women and children". Men who would otherwise not dream of surrendering will make terms with an enemy in return for the safety of a handful of women. If a man is killed, it is an accident of war; but if a woman or a child is killed it is a barbarous murder and a hundred lives - or a thousand - are sacrificed to avenge it. It is only a man like John Nicholson who has the courage to write, and mean it, that the safety of "women and children in some crises is such a very minor consideration that it ceases to be a consideration at all". If only more men thought like that you could all stay in Lunjore and be damned to you! — M.M. Kaye

Well, I never got to meet Jack Nicholson. — Mackenzie Astin

I don't want to direct a movie as good as Antonioni, or Kubrick, or Polanski, or whoever. I want it to be my own. I think I've got the seed of it and, what's more, that I can make movies that are different and informed by my taste. — Jack Nicholson

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

Some artists are normal people who just happen to make things because we can't figure out how in the hell to communicate with people. — Scott Nicholson

Most writers are secretly worried that they're not really writers. That it's all been happenstance, something came together randomly, the letters came together, and they won't coalesce ever again. — Nicholson Baker

I think I am done with Wikipedia for the time being. But I have a secret hope. Someone recently proposed a Wikimorgue - a bin of broken dreams where all rejects could still be read, as long as they weren't libelous or otherwise illegal. — Nicholson Baker

Once you've started a film you don't become a wet noodle. You must have that conflictual interface because you don't know, and they don't know. It's through conflict that you come out with something that might be different, better than either of you thought to begin with. — Jack Nicholson

What I feel bad about is not having published very much in the last few years. — Ben 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

I can't hit on women in public any more. I didn't decide this; it just doesn't feel right at my age. — Jack Nicholson

Weeds don't need planting in well-drained soil; they don't ask for fertilizer or bits of rag to scare away the birds. They come without invitation; and they don't take the hint when you want them to go. Weeds are nobody's guests: More like squatters. — Norman Nicholson

I've been in movies with Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson - but I was on 'The Simpsons,' and finally, in the eyes of my children, I was a star. — Ed Begley Jr.

I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God- it changes me. — William Nicholson

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

Few things look as unstable as the rock-solid certainties of previous ages. — Geoff 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

I've never been a fast reader. I'm fickle; I don't finish books I start; I put a book aside for five, ten years and then take it up again. — Nicholson Baker

The stage has a certain discipline. But the ultimate standard is more exacting in film, because you have to see yourself and you are your own toughest critic. — Jack Nicholson

He accepted what each moment brough him, and never troubled himself with matters that were outside his control. — William Nicholson

From my music training, I knew that, some Spanish rhythms apart, 5/4 is a time signature used only in the modern era. Holst's Mars from the Planets is 5/4. But if you speak lines of poetry in that pattern you just end up hitting the off-beats. It's only when you add a rest - a sixth beat - that it sounds as it surely should sound. — Nicholson Baker

Haven't you felt a peculiar sort of worry about the chair in your living room that no one sits in? — Nicholson Baker

You need the art in order to love the life. — Nicholson Baker

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

Jovan: "I'll pass any test you present me. I assure you."
Eviona: "I wonder what the best test of pride would be." — Eve S. 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

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

I've spent more time playing golf than anything else the last 18 years. Just wanted to be an 80s-shooter. Got there, too. — 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

I would like to visit the factory that makes train horns, and ask them how they are able to arrive at that chord of eternal mournfulness. Is it deliberately sad? Are the horns saying, Be careful, stay away from this train or it will run you over and then people will grieve, and their grief will be as the inconsolable wail of this horn through the night? The out-of-tuneness of the triad is part of its beauty. — Nicholson Baker

Lust shouts. Love whispers. Only the heart knows the difference. — Jan Hurst-Nicholson

If it is difficult to know yourself as an individual, it seems to be more complex as a couple. So if you say, "Oh I like a person who is like this and that," you might take away the possibility of seeing the only one that might be right for you. — Jack Nicholson

The force of truth that a statement imparts, then, its prominence among the hordes of recorded observations that I may optionally apply to my own life, depends, in addition to the sense that it is argumentatively defensible, on the sense that someone like me, and someone I like, whose voice is audible and who is at least notionally in the same room with me, does or can possibly hold it to be compellingly true. — Nicholson Baker

I'm Irish. I think about death all the time. — Jack Nicholson

Once I got started acting I loved it. — Jack Nicholson

I love writing, but I stopped because I felt I was more effective approaching filmmaking from a different vantage point. — Jack Nicholson

It was also wonderful to have the prospect of playing with Jack Nicholson. It was a terrific part, a terrific script, with Alexander Payne and Jack Nicholson. You can't get any better than that! — Kathy Bates

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

I'm a big fan of all the great movie devils, from Walter Huston to Ray Walston to Al Pacino to Jack Nicholson. — Ray Wise

My wife always says that I will be stuck with this forever: I am the difficult one. With Jack Nicholson they always said it was drugs. Warren Beatty is supposed to have screwed everything that jumped off the curve. I'll tell you, in reality a few of us had as many girls as Warren. — Dustin Hoffman

There are always struggles in writing. Anyone who denies this is either lying to themselves or you. Or they're not faithful to their audience. — Phoenix Elvis Nicholson

Greatly excited, and making little squeals and rumbles of pleasure, the Elephants grazed through the blue-bells, their trunks flying out to latch on to hazel branches, which they dragged and tore down and stuffed into their mouths. — Christopher Nicholson

Hapmshire" typo, — Nicholson Baker

If you see 'The Shining' with Jack Nicholson, you remember him not only because he is Jack Nicholson and because he does a wonderful job, but because he is a threat. The bad guy is someone people will have in their minds forever if it's a good bad guy. — Jordi Molla

People who speak in metaphors should shampoo my crotch. — Jack Nicholson

tightly, without — Nicholson Baker