Dennis Hopper Quotes

#1. When we're out of the eighties, the nineties are gonna make the sixties look like the fifties!

Dennis Hopper

#2. Work is fun to me. All those years of being an actor and a director and not being able to get a job - two weeks is too long to not know what my next job will be.

Dennis Hopper

#3. 'Easy Rider' was never a motorcycle movie to me. A lot of it was about politically what was going on in the country.

Dennis Hopper

#4. People keep asking me, 'What evil lurks in you to play such bad characters?' There is no evil in me, I just wear tight underwear.

Dennis Hopper

#5. You're like a turd that won't flush.

Dennis Hopper

#6. You know, this is such a rich time that we've just been involved in, and there's really a job now for historians. Film is still very young. This is the first hundred years of filmmaking. So I think it's important that we have some sense of history and continuity. Especially in film.

Dennis Hopper

#7. I was very shy, and it was a lot easier for me to communicate if I had a camera between me and other people.

Dennis Hopper

#8. I should have been dead ten times over. I've thought about that a lot. I believe in miracles. It's an absolute miracle that I'm still around.

Dennis Hopper

#9. Dialectic logic is there's only love and hate, you either love somebody or you hate them.

Dennis Hopper

#10. Independent films in this country are in the same position. Miramax and Fine Line are not independent - they're with Disney! Come on. Or they're with Warner Brothers. They're all with somebody.

Dennis Hopper

#11. Seven of those days were pretty good. The eighth day was the bad one.

Dennis Hopper

#12. I've been a Republican since Reagan. I voted for Bush and his father. I don't tell a lot of people, because I live in a city where somebody who voted for Bush is really an outcast.

Dennis Hopper

#13. I was a Shakespearean actor, I had preconceived ideas, line readings - everything was a gesture, everything was conscious.

Dennis Hopper

#14. The best and only authentic book written on the sixties underground.

Dennis Hopper

#15. In Method acting, you can't have preconceived ideas. You have to live in the moment. You have to keep yourself open.

Dennis Hopper

#16. It takes more than going down to the video store and renting "Easy Rider" to be a rebel.

Dennis Hopper

#17. I used to have to wear a gas mask to school when I was a kid because of the dust. I would tell people that the first light I saw was in a movie theater, because the sun was just a little glow.

Dennis Hopper

#18. Jimmy [Dean] was the most talented and original actor I ever saw work. He was also a guerrilla artist who attacked all restrictions on his sensibility. Once he pulled a switchblade and threatened to murder his director. I imitated his style in art and in life. It got me in a lot of trouble.

Dennis Hopper

#19. You want to hear about insanity? I was found running naked through the jungles in Mexico. At the Mexico City airport, I decided I was in the middle of a movie and walked out on the wing on takeoff. My body ... my liver ... okay, my brain ... went.

Dennis Hopper

#20. I am just a middle-class farm boy from Dodge City and my grandparents were wheat farmers. I thought painting, acting, directing and photography were all part of being an artist. I have made my money that way. And I have had some fun. It's not been a bad life.

Dennis Hopper

#21. The reality of things going on around me is more interesting than the fantasies of the world I work in.

Dennis Hopper

#22. My whole written history is one big lie! I mean, I can't even believe my history.

Dennis Hopper

#23. To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.

Dennis Hopper

#24. The alcohol was awful. I was a terrible alcoholic. I mean, people used to ask how much drugs I did. I said, 'I only do drugs so I can drink more'. I was doing the coke so I could drink more. I mean, I don't know any other reason. I'd start drinking in the morning. I'd drink all day long.

Dennis Hopper

#25. In a world where the dead have returned to life, the word trouble' loses much of its meaning.

Dennis Hopper

#26. Well, it's not just money. I consider myself establishment right now. I'm borderline establishment, I'm hanging on by my toenails - but I'm establishment.

Dennis Hopper

#27. I think of [my photographs] as found paintings because I don't crop them, I don't manipulate them or anything. So they're like found objects to me.

Dennis Hopper

#28. When I was about 14. I saw my first mountain. I saw the ocean for the first time. I remember thinking that that ocean looked very similar to our wheat fields. I didn't know what I thought I would see when I looked out at the ocean, but I thought I'd see something different.

Dennis Hopper

#29. You know, the history of California art doesn't start until about 1961, and that's when these photographs start. I mean, we have no history out here.

Dennis Hopper

#30. Like all artists, I want to cheat death a little and contribute something to the next generation.

Dennis Hopper

#31. The inside of the Pentagon is an incredible place and a dramatic set. We do [travel] outside, but the inside workings of the civilian oversight of the military inside the Pentagon is really about as exciting as anything you ever want to deal with. It is really amazing.

Dennis Hopper

#32. Art is a bad word in Hollywood. You use art too many times and they show you the elevator and then your name is taken off the parking lot.

Dennis Hopper