Quotes by Dustin Hoffman
Well first of all, it's hard to shoot a movie and break for a long time and then come back and do, in a sense, one of the biggest scenes that each character had.
I stopped working a few years ago because I just lost a spark that I'd had before. I thought I'd just try writing, and maybe start directing, but I did it very quietly.
Somehow I think it was declared very early on that I was the - if not the black sheep of the family, not a very good student.
So when I told my parents I wanted to go into acting because I was flunking out of my first year of junior college, they were relieved that I had picked something other than joining the army. But I can't imagine how they had high hopes for me.
I think the most insulting thing you can do to a director is to challenge when he or she is satisfied with your interpretation.
I feel cheated never being able to know what it's like to get pregnant, carry a child and breast feed.
I envy people who can just look at a sunset. I wonder how you can shoot it. There is nothing more grotesque to me than a vacation.
I mean, I don't think I'm alone when I look at the homeless person or the bum or the psychotic or the drunk or the drug addict or the criminal and see their baby pictures in my mind's eye. You don't think they were cute like every other baby?
Life stinks, but that doesn't mean you don't enjoy it.
In my room as a kid... I'd play a fighter and get knocked to the floor and come back to win.
The two basic items necessary to sustain life are sunshine and coconut milk.
If you have this enormous talent, it's got you by the balls, it's a demon. You can't be a family man and a husband and a caring person and be that animal. Dickens wasn't that nice a guy.
If there is no direct threat why are we invading?
There's a rebirth that goes on with us continuously as human beings. I don't understand, personally, how you can be bored. I can understand how you can be depressed, but I just don't understand boredom.
For me as an American, the most painful aspect of this is that I believe that that administration has taken the events of 9/11 and has manipulated the grief of the country and I think that's reprehensible.
And that's another reason to make this movie: We can put plays on film now, at a relatively small cost, and they will reach an audience they would never have reached otherwise.
I decided to become an actor because I was failing in school and I needed the credits.
A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.
One thing about being successful is that I stopped being afraid of dying. Once you're a star you're dead already. You're embalmed.
I did some writing and bought a book, and have been working on that as a film to act and direct in.
I did a movie called Marathon Man and it was one of my best memories.
Blame is for God and small children.
Myth is supposed to bring us together, but fantasy alienates us.
I believe - though I may be wrong, because I'm no expert - that this war is about what most wars are about: hegemony, money, power and oil.
