Top 100 John Malkovich Quotes
#1. You know, I'm really not interested in someone telling me that something's good or bad.
John Malkovich
#2. I grew up in the Midwest, quite far from any ocean or any beach, a million miles. I think for kids who grew up where I did, the idea of California, surfing and beach life was so exotic and glamorous.
John Malkovich
#3. Art is not disposable. If you want it, you have to hold it and smell it and touch it and read the credits and enjoy it and put it on your wall.
John Malkovich
#4. I can see how, given a certain degree of sensitivities, proclivities and rage, I could have ended up differently.
John Malkovich
#5. My father could be very distancing. My clearest memory is of him squatting, watering plants for hours and hours at a time, completely silent. He was very self-contained; my mother was more outgoing and chatty and social. I'm certainly more like her.
John Malkovich
#6. I don't really go through a process, it goes through me.
John Malkovich
#8. Scary monsters are like Hula Hoops. They come in and out of fashion.
John Malkovich
#9. I've always been an avid reader. Everyone in my family read a lot. Considering we were from a little town, we were pretty literate.
John Malkovich
#10. One doesn't know if one had a happy childhood or not. I don't really know what it means.
John Malkovich
#11. And may the best of you - for it will only be the best of you, and even then only in the rarest and briefest moments - succeed in framing that most basic of questions, 'how do we live?'
John Malkovich
#12. I love Chicago, but in a lot of ways it's a disappointment. You can work there for years and years, and because you're in Chicago, you don't get the recognition. It has some of the best theater in the country, but when they shoot a movie there, they bring in all their actors.
John Malkovich
#13. It's a little bit hard to have personal things subject to public scrutiny, and it's a pressure that other people aren't under, but then they're under a lot of pressures that we're not under.
John Malkovich
#14. I think I was born at a time when an American male had so many advantages and opportunities that weren't available to men before or after, just a very brief period.
John Malkovich
#15. Actors generally get to do things you probably shouldn't do in real life - well, at least as much as one might like to or be tempted to. Though I suppose a lot of actors just go ahead and do it, don't they?
John Malkovich
#16. You have to do things people see or you don't get to do anything.
John Malkovich
#18. I know fashion can be intensely goofy, but it is something I've always taken pretty seriously.
John Malkovich
#19. You can't work in the movies. Movies are all about lighting. Very few filmmakers will concentrate on the story. You get very little rehearsal time, so anything you do onscreen is a kind of speed painting.
John Malkovich
#20. Well, I design costumes because I started with the theater in Chicago, but somehow a few lines just sort of fell to me to do it. And I studied it in school and I always liked it.
John Malkovich
#22. I mean, anything that money can be made off will never be a problem to make, no matter what it is.
John Malkovich
#23. I only have two rules for my newly born daughter: she will dress well and never have sex.
John Malkovich
#25. I'm a little bit phobic about stains on my clothes, so I never travel without a little packet of organic stain remover.
John Malkovich
#27. I don't want to be boring. But that's not always easy.
John Malkovich
#28. It's not a gift of mine, but one given to me, to be able to criticise myself and not be crushed, by myself or by others.
John Malkovich
#29. My father was an exceptionally strong influence on me.
John Malkovich
#30. Sigmund Freud said we act out our own dreams, but if you are only an actor you are not acting out your own dream. You are simply participating in someone else's dream.
John Malkovich
#31. A dog that has rabies probably will do things it wouldn't do if it didn't have rabies. But that doesn't change the fact that it has rabies.
John Malkovich
#33. Most of the women that I like have a haunted quality - they're sort of like women who live in a haunted house by themselves.
John Malkovich
#34. I lost seventy pounds eating nothing but Jello for 4 months. But of course there is great variety in the colors! I think, if I remember correctly, it's 230 calories for a whole bowl. Maybe 270? In the 5th month, I added fruit.
John Malkovich
#35. Along with the good qualities, if someone isn't vulnerable I can't be around them to a certain extent. And I don't mean vulnerable to me or vulnerable to me in a sexual way. I just mean vulnerable, period.
John Malkovich
#38. Some people die before their time so that others can live. It's a cornerstone of civilization.
John Malkovich
#41. I don't like things too overstated in the cut or too perfect.
John Malkovich
#43. I have probably four or five male friends who have a real strong masculine side but some degree of a feminine side, too. They're pretty rare, whereas I think women with a masculine side are much less rare.
John Malkovich
#45. There are many, many benefits to being known for whatever it is you do. To deny that would be sort of asinine and vulgar.
John Malkovich
#47. I never wanted to be with someone who just hung around the house.
John Malkovich
#49. I love to watch good actors who surprise and amuse me.
John Malkovich
#50. I have at times spoken with my peers and the head of the actors' union about why we're not paid when we appear in, say, a 'TMZ' production, but there seems to be no real interest in combatting it.
John Malkovich
#52. The projects I look for to produce or direct would not be ones in which I would want to act.
John Malkovich
#53. Some directors expect you to do everything; write, be producer, psychiatrist. Some just want you to die in a tragic accident during the shooting so they can get the insurance.
John Malkovich
#55. I find it hard to pre-plan every element of everything I do. It's not my thing.
John Malkovich
#56. I don't really have a comprehension of being a public figure.
John Malkovich
#57. The theater is so disappointing, really, that it's hard to go again and again. It's just too heartbreaking. I'd rather watch football or play a game or read.
John Malkovich
#59. People get up, they go to work, they have their lives, but you'll never see the headlines say, 'Six billion people got along rather well today.' You'll have the headline about the 30 people who shot each other.
John Malkovich
#60. I haven't physically attacked anyone in a couple of years.
John Malkovich
#61. I like to direct movies, but I don't like to goof around for eight years talking about it.
John Malkovich
#62. I'd hate to see any film I'm involved in fail, especially artistically but also business-wise.
John Malkovich
#63. I don't understand how somebody wouldn't have a sense of humor about themselves.
John Malkovich
#64. I think people seem to sort of associate me with danger. And I don't see that at all.
John Malkovich
#65. There will be people who hate everything you do. And some people will really love it. But that's not really different from the people who really hate it.
John Malkovich
#66. The world is ruled by violence, or at least the imminent threat of violence. It always has been.
John Malkovich
#67. I'll never be the biggest kind of star; I'll be like Bob Duvall, respected as an actor but a lot of people can't identify the face. I don't have the personality of a big star, or the looks of a Mel Gibson or a Paul Newman, or the style of a George C. Scott.
John Malkovich
#68. We have a tendency to think everyone's idiotic and everyone's only doing something idiotic, and the world is controlled by a not-so-secret group of morons. There's great truth in that, I suppose, but then it's also not true.
John Malkovich
#69. I always liked clothes; since I was very, very young, I was interested. I studied costume as part of my theatre education.
John Malkovich
#70. I go around the world, working with all kinds of people who I love.
John Malkovich
#71. For a while I wanted to be a professional baseball pitcher, and then I wanted to be a musician and then sometimes I think I'd like to start a store for gift-wrapping Christmas presents ... But I feel I could do most things I set my mind to, except mechanical things, I'm not very good at that.
John Malkovich
#72. I don't wake up drenched in sweat because I haven't been on stage in years.
John Malkovich
#73. Most films, it doesn't matter if you see them or not.
John Malkovich
#76. There's no worse feeling in the world than realizing the play you've directed doesn't work.
John Malkovich
#78. I admire sensible, kind people. They're not often famous.
John Malkovich
#79. I wasn't really raised to be the type of person to have doubts.
John Malkovich
#80. If you're too smart it can limit you because you spend so much time thinking that you don't do anything.
John Malkovich
#82. If you don't interfere with me, I'll always do something really good.
John Malkovich
#83. I don't have a great intellect, and I can't compete with people who do. I feel certain things. And all I know, and all I can do, is what I feel.
John Malkovich
#85. I'm more likely to lose my temper on a film set than almost anywhere. Often the level of idiocy is so exalted that it's impossible to comprehend.
John Malkovich
#86. I think probably when I was little, after my brother turned on me, I just had to play by myself or with myself. I've always done that. I think either it's some kind of weirdly competitive streak or it takes my mind off whatever's bothering me.
John Malkovich
#87. When you do a really good play, the audience and the performers are looking into the same looking glass, the same microscope. And the specimen they are looking at is human life and that's why I do it, that's why I like it.
John Malkovich
#88. And if you say a word about this over the radio, the next wings you see will belong to the flies buzzing over your rotting corpse.
John Malkovich
#90. Even if you do succeed most people wouldn't notice anyway.
John Malkovich
#91. Fashion is chaotic, and it can be an aggravation, too, but it is at its best when it allows you to express yourself.
John Malkovich
#92. I like design, I like details, to me it is just another form of self-expression.
John Malkovich
#94. I don't lose my temper very often now, and if I do, it's well deserved.
John Malkovich
#95. My life before children I don't really remember. I've heard references to it, but I really don't remember.
John Malkovich
#98. I'm very much a typical midwesterner, and I don't think the condition is curable.
John Malkovich
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