Edward Norton Quotes

EDWARD NORTON QUOTES

• “Life, like poker, has an element of risk. It shouldn't be avoided. It should be faced.”
• “I almost forgot what it's like to be proud of my government.”
• “Lewis and Clark's expedition is as great a story as you could ever hope to tell, and like so many people, Brad and I have both been drawn to it for years,”
• On being nominated for an Oscar: It's fun, but when it's over, it disappears almost immediately - like a week afterward. Who remembers right off the top of their head who won Best Supporting Actor last year anyway?
• I always felt that acting was an escape, like having the secret key to every door and permission to go into any realm and soak it up. I enjoy that free pass.
• Acting? It's a longstanding compulsion I've had since I was about five or six years old. I can literally identify the moment it struck me. I went to see a play [If I Were a Princess] in which a babysitter of mine [Betsy True, who later acted on Broadway] was performing. I was completely shell-shocked by the magic of this little community-theater play; it just riveted me.
• I don't smoke and I don't want to smoke. I am not a fan of gratuitous smoking in films.
• Life, like poker has an element of risk. It shouldn't be avoided. It should be faced.
• If I ever have to stop taking the subway, I'm gonna have a heart attack.
• Fame is very corrosive and you have to guard very strictly against it.
• I've never felt any particular encroachment of the 'celebrity' stuff into my life.
• I'm an actor and, each time out, I'm trying to convince the audience that I'm this character. Every little thing that people know about you as a person impedes your ability to achieve that kind of terrific suspension of disbelief that happens when an audience goes with an actor and character [he's] playing.
• The more you can create that magic bubble, that suspension of disbelief, for a while, the better.
• It's a nice position to be in; I'm lucky. At the same time, all the excitement of that has been put into stark perspective ... In some ways, the highs of it have been blunted, which in a way, is a gift.
• First of all, you never make all things for all people and can't always pander to the broadest denominator. I keep an eye toward doing the themes that interest me. Do they move me? Interest me? Make me think? When I run across something that is provocative in an unsettling way, it appeals to me.
• People wrestle sometimes making movies, and I think that conflict is a very essential thing. I think a lot of very happy productions have produced a lot of very banal movies.
• I'm not interested in making movies for everybody. I like making movies for myself and my friends and people with my sensibility.
• I always felt that acting was an escape, like having the secret key to every door and permission to go into any realm and soak it up. I enjoy that free pass.
• "Nobody makes me uncomfortable here. It's a place where you can be eternally anonymous." - the reason he loves living in New York City
• In fact, the United States today keeps on making the same sort of mistakes. We force those methods we think are useful on a few countries, hoping to make a few changes.
• I get heartbroken flying into L.A. It's just this feeling of unspecific loss. Can you imagine what the San Fernando Valley was when it was all wheat fields? Can you imagine what John Steinbeck saw?
• Just because you've made a couple movies, you've done some good movies, you've been nominated for some Academy Awards, whatever, nobody's entitled. It's a business. If they don't see it, I can think they're wrong, but I'm not entitled to a $15 million budget to make a film.
• He has such a rich mellifluous voice. Anytime I would hear him speak, it would remind me of how flat my voice is. (about Ralph Fiennes)
• [on showing Marlon Brando "The Simpsons"] I showed him the episode where Marge gets cast in a musical version of "A Streetcar Named Desire." He loved it. Marlon loves stuff like that.
• [on Robert De Niro] I look at De Niro, and the thing I admire about him is just the length and diversity of his career. He has just done so much wonderful work and so many different kinds of work. That to me is worth something.
• I remember when I heard they were making The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), I was like, 'God, if they cheese those out, I'm going to be so disappointed. (But) those films were inspiring to me in terms of deciding to take The Incredible Hulk (2008).
• [On his role as a policeman in 'Pride and Glory'] I started to have a special interest in this project when I thought this could actually be something that's reflecting the moment we are going through - in terms of a nation and as a culture - regarding a sense of ethics.
• All people are paradoxical. No one is easily reducible, so I like characters who have contradictory impulses or shades of ambiguity. It's fun, and it's fun because it's hard.