Smits Quotes & Sayings

What I felt was, if you spend your life just writing fiction, you are going to falsify your material. And the fictional form was going to force you to do things with the material, to dramatize it in a certain way. I thought nonfiction gave one a chance to explore the world, the other world, the world that one didn't know fully. — V.S. Naipaul

I am a firm believer in education and have worked very hard to tell young Latinos that they must go to college and that, if possible, they should pursue an advanced degree. I am convinced that education is the great equalizer. — Jimmy Smits

For minority actors, developing our own projects has to be the eventual path. We have a lot of stories to tell and a really unique voice. But none of that is going to be heard as long as we're just the hired hands, acting. — Jimmy Smits

It's great to be able to play the bad guy role because you always get a lot to do, but I'm always looking at the why. How does a person get to that particular point? It's those little cogs in the wheel that make it interesting for me to play. Ultimately, I hope for the audience to be engaged with it because it is going to take a turn. — Jimmy Smits

I acknowledge that such a debt [of service to my fellow-citizens] exists, that a tour of duty in whatever line he can be most useful to his country, is due from every individual. It is not easy perhaps to say of what length exactly that tour should be, but we may safely say of what length it should not be. Not of our whole life, for instance, for that would be to be born a slave-not even of a very large portion of it. — Thomas Jefferson

There are no right and wrong ways to work in this business, but there are some basic common-sense practices. Work very, very hard and always be prepared; never give up; and once you get the job, give them more than they ever expected: - Shine! — Jimmy Smits

Well, when I came to Hollywood, there were three names really of Latin actors, three or four names, maybe five. There was Raul Julia, Edward James Olmos, Andy Garcia, Antonio Banderas, Jimmy Smits. Now there's a lot. — Benicio Del Toro

I'm an actor. I love to act. That's my job. I'll leave the politicking to others. — Jimmy Smits

Orangutan babies are like human babies: helpless. — Willie Smits

I don't consider a lot of actors that I really admire movie stars. — Greg Kinnear

You have to find what makes you stable in the storm. Then, no matter what's happening round you, no matter what the hype or the publicity, you can still manage to make leaps in your work as an artist. — Jimmy Smits

I must stress, basically, the very fact that we do have orangutan rehabilitation means that we have failed to do what is really important, and that is rescue the wild orangutan in its habitat. — Willie Smits

A teenage boy with a Mohawk sat across from me, sneering. I'd seen that look before. Why was it a problem to knit in public?
"My grandma knits."
I ignored him.
"So what are you making, Grandma?" Mohawk's voice was ugly.
I arched my eyebrow. "A cashmere cock ring. Your grandma ever knit one of those?"
The kid's eyes grew wide, and he suddenly became very interested in a four-year-old issue of Teen Vogue. — Leslie Langtry

It's less about the physical training, in the end, than it is about the mental preparation: boxing is a chess game. You have to be skilled enough and have trained hard enough to know how many different ways you can counterattack in any situation, at any moment. — Jimmy Smits

If you're afraid to live your life in a glass bubble, how can you do what we do in this industry? — Jimmy Smits

How's Tucker? You guys an actual thing?"

"We're something," I mutter.

"What's that supposed to mean? You've been seeing him since the end of October. That's more than four months. In Sabrina Land, you might as well be engaged."

Actually, eighteen weeks and three days, but who's counting besides me and my OB? — Elle Kennedy

Just give me a good role that allows me to hone my craft, and I am a pretty happy camper. — Jimmy Smits

Though I have no productive worth, I have a certain value as an indestructible quantity. — Alice James

People don't walk around thinking of themselves as bad people. You're part of the environment that you grow up in, and there can be decency in that. I always try to find a little glimmer of that, in anything that I do, because you can find places where there's humor or lightness in something that's deep and profound, and that tends to resonate more and make people more human. As an actor and performer, I think it resonates more with the audience when you do have the payoff. — Jimmy Smits

I've been very lucky to work on a wide variety of projects, including two long-run and top-10 dramatic television shows. That is why it is so important to offer a helping hand to the next generation of young Latinos coming up behind me. — Jimmy Smits

Don't cry for the lose of friendship because your lose does not matter to that person who left you, They make fun of your special tears, So never let other make you feel low, Because it gives you the pain not to them. — Debolina Bhawal

Orangutans look straight into your soul. — Willie Smits

Congratulations on turning 60
Now you can wear what you like
No one cares, and more particularly
You're fine telling 'em 'Take a hike' — John Walter Bratton

When we are out there selling a new picture, when did it become part of the deal that you have to sell the family? To use the juicy part of your life to get attention? I'm not blaming the reporters. It's the system. — Jimmy Smits

You have to be like a sponge and use what you can and how it relates because TV is fluid. Things change on a week-to-week basis. Those are the things that I do with every character. If I'm involved in a boxing movie, I go see fights and learn about boxing. It's part of what we do. — Jimmy Smits

I like the gypsy aspect of this business. — Jimmy Smits

There's something so familial and intimate between a boxer and his trainer. — Jimmy Smits

There are a lot of doors that still get shut, and there are a lot of walls to still breach. But, the stuff that does come across to me, or that I hear about or read about, that I'm willing to go out there and fight for, I still have to go audition. I do have a certain leeway to choose, from that group, what I want to say, as an artist. — Jimmy Smits

We feel too much. React too much. Say too much. Need too much. So says the world. Except the world is wrong. — Anonymous

In my college years, I worked as a union labor organizer. I was just one of the many workers trying to do my part to help the community. — Jimmy Smits

I never thought television would or could be a long-term commitment. — Jimmy Smits

I'm always sitting down and talking to people that are doing independent features. It depends on the project and the quotient of the people that are involved. There are a lot of different reasons [to do something], like a particular script that resonates with me, in a particular way. It may not so much even be about the part, but what the script has to say. — Jimmy Smits

In many ways, Viv and I were the only ones who were really songwriters. — Neil Innes

I've been in California for about 15 years now. You're always in your car and insulated. I miss New York so much. — Jimmy Smits

I would gladly do it but I am suffering from social phobia. I cannot manage being in a crowd of people. — Elfriede Jelinek

Passion is a quality I admire in a woman. — Cate Blanchett

Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics and factories. Literacy is a platform for democratization, and a vehicle for the promotion of cultural and national identity. Especially for girls and women, it is an agent of family health and nutrition. For everyone, everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general, a basic human right ... Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential. — Kofi Annan

Celebrity hits like a bomb. — Jimmy Smits

I don't differentiate between black and Latino actors. We're in the same struggle to be represented in a way that's even close to honest. And I can tell you that the amount of Latino characters I can point at and say, 'That's what my life experience looks like' - I can't think of any off the top of my head besides Jimmy Smits in 'Mi Familia.' — Lin-Manuel Miranda

It was a nice day. — Terry Pratchett

Oh, here comes Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and Jimmy Smits! — Roger Ebert