Top 100 Huston's Quotes
#1. Because Dad was famous, I was so used to being identified as 'John Huston's daughter' that I couldn't think of myself as anyone else.
Allegra Huston
#2. The best book of the year, Grobel's writing is quite marvelous. The Hustons reads vividly, just like one of John Huston's great films.
J.P. Donleavy
#3. It's still possible to find pockets of old Dublin - but its becoming more and more rarified.
Anjelica Huston
#4. The old movie stars like Bogart, James Cagney, Jimmy Stewart, they weren't this gorgeous, striking six-foot man who's rippled with muscles.
Jack Huston
#5. Wally, stop playing with your beans."
Mom is participating in a nightly ritual that never changes. Tonight, The Turd's picking up lima beans, sniffing each one, and burying it in his mashed potatoes.
"I'm not playing with them," he says, matter-of-factly. "I'm checking them for fleas.
Huston Piner
#6. To find meaning in the mystery of existence is life's final and fascinating challenge.
Huston Smith
#7. If we take the world's enduring religions at their best, we discover the distilled wisdom of the human race.
Huston Smith
#8. Emerson argued that "the whole secret of the teacher's force lies in the conviction that men are convertible, and they are. They want awakening, [and for that purpose they need teachers] to get the soul out of bed, out of her deep habitual sleep." That
Huston Smith
#9. I like it when you read a script and there's the part that you show to the other characters and then there's the part that only the audience knows.
Anjelica Huston
#10. And then there's my brother Wally; he's four years younger than me, and he's the classic younger brother
a turd. The Turd is kind of like that old nursery rhyme about snails and puppy dog tails; he's got the intelligence of a slug and he's about as well house-trained as a Chihuahua.
Huston Piner
#11. Many years ago ... many, many years ago, I brought up a boy, and I said to him, 'Son, if you ever become a writer, try to write a good part for your old man sometime.' Well, by cracky, that's what he did!
Walter Huston
#12. I might be at a point where I don't want to go with a genre convention but I have to produce some pages. It's hard work. And it requires you learn certain skills.
Charlie Huston
#13. I'm so lucky to have such a great family. I respect them so much professionally, and they've been unconditionally supportive in the choices that I've made. It's been very good having them on my side.
Jack Huston
#14. Even Michelangelo on his deathbed thought he'd done nothing to ennoble art. He wanted to destroy his work-the Pieta! And this from the greatest artist who ever lived. Of course I am not comparing my work to Michelangelo's. But this eternal dissatisfaction of the artist is what I was talking about.
John Huston
#15. There's never any telling what you'll say or do next, except that it's bound to be something astonishing. By God, sir, you are a character.
John Huston
#16. Usually when you're working on fight scenes, you don't really feel what's going on physically. It's more when you go back home and you're like, "My god!," and you wear the wounds or bruises with a certain amount of pride.
Danny Huston
#17. Money makes people stupid. They don't have to work as hard as people who don't have money. That's why the smart people who do have money mostly use it for one thing ...
They use it to make sure the people without it don't get any more.
Charlie Huston
#18. It's often difficult for us to act compassionately, but sacred art eases the difficulty by ennobling us.
Huston Smith
#19. And it's not like I'm the only guy in history to ever get a hard on in a high school locker room; for a lot of guys it's just a natural reaction to the cool moist air. But the trouble is that around certain guys, I'm radically reactionary.
Huston Piner
#20. God has to speak to each person in their own language, in their own idioms. Take Spanish, Chinese. You can express the same thought, but to different people you have to use a different language. It's the same in religion.
Huston Smith
#21. If I saw something once that I can't explain, that doesn't make them real. And if a trick of the dark gave me a chill, that doesn't make them real. And if a madman says what's at the core of us all is a senseless, flapping quiver of black shade, that's just one more reason not to believe.
Charlie Huston
#22. I don't see myself ever retiring, unless it's for something that I like better, and so far I like directing a lot but I don't see the necessity to retire from anything unless there's a really great alternative.
Anjelica Huston
#23. I don't try to guess what a million people will like. It's hard enough to know what I like.
John Huston
#24. There is very little sense that anybody really knows what works or why. But that's not a shock. And I don't think market research would solve that.
Charlie Huston
#25. The New Age movement looks like a mixed bag. I see much in it that seems good: It's optimistic; it's enthusiastic; it has the capacity for belief. On the debit side, I think one needs to distinguish between belief and credulity.
Huston Smith
#26. I don't have any fear of death. I do, however, have an inordinate fear of becoming dependent on other people. To me, that's the severest test, not death.
Huston Smith
#27. I've always thought with relationships, that it's more about what you bring to the table than what you're going to get from it. It's very nice if you sit down and the cake appears. But if you go to the table expecting cake, then it's not so good.
Anjelica Huston
#28.
Tell them to drop their guns and fuck off out of my way.
Allow him to
I clamp my arm tight.
That's not what I said.
She gets it right this time.
Drop your guns and fuck off out of his way.
They drop their guns and fuck off out of my way.
Charlie Huston
#29. People say, "Why is it that you love to act?" And you want to say, "Well, most of acting is sitting in your trailer, either bored or worried about the scene coming up." A lot of it is about things you don't really like, so it's a wonder why acting is such a huge draw, why everyone loves it so much.
Anjelica Huston
#30. It was great to work in Ireland because it's such a beautiful country, but it's not particularly easy to film in because the weather changes all the time.
Anjelica Huston
#31. When you make motion pictures, each picture is a life unto itself. When you finish and the picture is over, there's an understanding, a realization that we'll never be assembled this way again. That these relationships are severed forever and ever. And each of these films is a little life.
John Huston
#32. I know certainly, when one job draws to a close, that I feel I'm simply never going to work again. No one will ever want me for anything ever again. I think that's a vulnerable moment in every actor's life, and it happens every time you finish a film.
Anjelica Huston
#33. If Rumi is the most-read poet in America today, Coleman Barks is in good part responsible. His ear for the truly divine madness in Rumi's poetry is really remarkable.
Huston Smith
#34. What's inside is inside for a reason.
What's hidden is hidden for a reason.
What's buried is buried for a reason.
Charlie Huston
#35. It's certainly what I like best about getting older. You're not up for grabs for criticism anymore. You make a decision, it's made, it's fine, you don't have to go back and rework it. You don't have to apologize.
Anjelica Huston
#36. And it was from a Hindu, Swami Satprakashananda with his Christmas talks on "Jesus Christ, the Son of God," that I received the strongest confirmation - by an outside examiner, as it were - of Jesus's divine nature.
Huston Smith
#37. I think I've become the go-to mustache man. It works in period pieces. Modern-day mustaches are probably creepy. But I get compliments - everyone's like, 'Wow, love the 'stache, dude.'
Jack Huston
#38. If I were to have any sort of solid idea about which moments were God's manifestations, they would be those moments where one has practically nothing to do with what's going on. It's one of the best feelings in the world.
Anjelica Huston
#39. I loved being blonde. It's true, they have more fun, even when they're cannibalising their children.
Anjelica Huston
#40. You can almost read any emotion through someone's eyes.
Jack Huston
#41. What you try to become is a bringer of magic, for magic and the truth are closely allied and movies are sheer magic ... when they work, it's, well, it's glorious.
John Huston
#42. I don't think it's necessarily healthy to go into relationships as a needy person. Better to go in with a full deck.
Anjelica Huston
#43. It's a puzzler, and I don't want to sound full of myself, but I may just be the Vyrus messiah."
He shakes his head.
"I don't know for sure. Have to meditate on that shit some more. Anyhoo.
Charlie Huston
#44. There's a great Lebanese restaurant a few blocks over. They have the best shawarma in the world."
"What's shawarma?"
"You know what a gyro is?"
"No."
"Same thing.
Huston Piner
#45. Walnuts have a shell, and they have a kernel. Religions are the same. They have an essence, but then they have a protective coating. This is not the only way to put it. But it's my way. So the kernels are the same. However, the shells are different.
Huston Smith
#46. Look at Walter Huston in The Devil and Daniel Webster: It's an incredible performance.
Taylor Hackford
#47. Losing one's mother to a car crash at age four isn't a readily accessible idea of good luck, but I've come to accept it as the condition that was required for my luck to fall into place.
Allegra Huston
#48. I see myself as part English and part American, with a dash of Irish thrown in, and a pinch of Italian from my mother's ancestry.
Allegra Huston
#49. Don't waste time on what's not important. Don't get sucked into the drama. Get on with it: don't dwell on the past. Be a big person; be generous of spirit; be the person you'd admire.
Allegra Huston
#50. As an actor, it's hard to direct because, suddenly, you're not around. The thing which I hate about directing is the waiting game, but you've really got to wait it out and be resilient and keep it going and keep everybody motivated.
Danny Huston
#51. The violence for me is never meant to be entertaining. It's meant to hurt the characters and I'm trying to show the impact it is having on the people involved with it. If there is cathartic violence at the end, then it costs the protagonist something. It's not just a blaze-of-glory moment.
Charlie Huston
#52. I was certainly a better actor after my five years in Hollywood. I had learned to be natural - never to exaggerate. I found I could act on the stage in just the same way as I had acted in a studio: using my ordinary voice, eliminating gestures, keeping everything extremely simple.
Walter Huston
#53. Pure science - this vision of the universe as 15 billion light years across - I am bedazzled and awed by it.
Huston Smith
#54. Hell, I ain't paid to make good lines sound good. I'm paid to make bad lines sound good.
Walter Huston
#55. Religion teaches us that our lives here on earth are to be used for transformation.
Huston Smith
#56. Once you have found the right shot to introduce the scene-written your first declarative sentence-then the rest flows. You've found the key to the whole scene.
John Huston
#57. Being called a person, as such, indicates that one should only have one character and be true to it.
Anjelica Huston
#58. So always, if we look back, concern for face-to-face morality, and its modern emphasis on justice as well, have historically evolved as religious issues.
Huston Smith
#59. I was a supporting character in other people's lives, which seemed right and familiar to me. I was also an outsider: English in the U.S., American in England, dogged yet comforted by that familiar feeling of alien-ness, which occupied that space where my sense of self should have been.
Allegra Huston
#60. I have two new nephews and a new niece this year, so I have plenty of kids that I can spend time with.
Anjelica Huston
#61. The whole thing of doing a TV series, I find it very daunting not knowing where the story's going.
Danny Huston
#62. Once we understand how they think, we can predict their behaviour. And once we predict it well, we can manipulate it. That is diplomacy.
Charlie Huston
#63. That's what happens when you get a regular job, other people's shit becomes your problem. 'Course, by the time you got that figured, it's up around your ears and you're just trying to keep your [expletive]ing mouth shut.
Charlie Huston
#64. Oh, all kinds of lunacy happens in Ireland, all kinds of lunacy.
Anjelica Huston
#65. Sometimes you're not always on or at your best, especially during auditions. So if you go in and you don't nail it, even if they're like, 'We don't need to see you again,' get a friend, get a video camera, and film you doing the stuff again.
Jack Huston
#66. After his great awakening, the Buddha continued to meditate and to devote himself to others; otherwise his vision would have receded into a pleasant memory.
Huston Smith
#67. Going back to Ireland involves at least six to seven emotional breakdowns for me per day.
Anjelica Huston
#68. Human intelligence is a reflection of the intelligence that produces everything. In knowing, we are simply extending the intelligence that comes to and constitutes us. We mimic the mind of God, so to speak. Or better, we continue and extend it.
Huston Smith
#69. With mind distracted, never thinking, "Death is coming,"
To slave away on the pointless business of mundane life,
And then to come out empty
it is a tragic error. (116)
trans by Robert Thurman
Huston Smith
#70. Of course drugs were fun. And that's what's so stupid about anti-drug campaigns: they don't admit that. I can't say I feel particularly scarred or lessened by my experimentation with drugs. They've gotten a very bad name.
Anjelica Huston
#71. When I moved to London at age 16, tired of the shuffle around other people's houses and ready to live on my own, I met my English brother and sister, who instantly claimed me as family.
Allegra Huston
#72. At the center of the religious life is a peculiar kind of joy, the prospect of a happy ending that blossoms from necessarily painful ordeals, the promise of human difficulties embraced and overcome.
Huston Smith
#73. I'd always wanted to act, but it was a question of whether acting wanted me and whether the movies wanted me.
Anjelica Huston
#74. I'm very fond of doing movies where men fight over me. I don't get to do enough.
Anjelica Huston
#76. Most mystics do not want to read religious wisdom; they want to be it. A postcard of a beautiful lake is not a beautiful lake, and Sufis may be defined as those who dance in the lake.
Huston Smith
#77. I've spent the last 50 years or so steeping myself in the world's religions, and I've done my homework. I've gone to each of the world's eight great religions and sought out the most profound scholars I could find, and I've apprenticed myself to them and actually practiced each faith.
Huston Smith
#78. I look at 'Love Child' and it's as if it was written by someone else - someone who knew what they were doing.
Allegra Huston
#79. I had assumed that Bush's seemingly inflexible policy to support Sharon was for political reasons of his getting elected. But as to whether he really believes his actions are going to hasten the day of the final conflict, I do not know.
Huston Smith
#80. Course you can't fucking see, buddy, it's darker than a nun's virgin anus down here.
Charlie Huston
#81. You should always play with and not according to the rules, because a life with no danger in it is no life at all.
Nancy Huston
#82. I have my television, my books and that becomes my little world.
Anjelica Huston
#83. Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking Program achieved for me a thing that I thought was not possible - to give up a thirty year smoking habit literally overnight. It was nothing short of a miracle.
Anjelica Huston
#84. I fell in love with Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power and Basil Rathbone and Hitchcock and Orson Welles and John Huston.
John Logan
#85. There's a point where art is not subjective, and my example for that is Picasso. If you don't like Picasso, that's your problem.
Danny Huston
#86. Writing must certainly be one of the hardest professions - writing and painting.
Anjelica Huston
#87. It's not color, it's like pouring 40 tablespoons of sugar water over a roast.
John Huston
#88. Growing up, I spent a lot of time on film sets all over the world.
Danny Huston
#89. Chadham's idea of an open-minded, modern town had no room for faggots. Being gay made you about as welcome as a turd in the swimming pool.
Piner, Huston (2015-05-12). Light in Endless Darkness (Kindle Locations 25-26). Torquere Press. Kindle Edition.
Huston Piner
#90. John Huston was a superb master. He knew how to make good films. I did three things with him. One is called Independence. It plays in Philadelphia, for free. It's been playing there for 25 years.
Eli Wallach
#91. Science is like a flashlight in the hands of people living in a huge balloon. They can illuminate anything in the balloon, but cannot shine it outside the balloon to see where it is floating - or if it is floating at all.
Huston Smith
#93. Some people had fathers who were bankers or farmers, my father made films, that's how I saw it. As for the movie stars, they were just around, some of them were friends, others weren't, it was all just a part of my everyday life.
Anjelica Huston
#94. I'm not all that big on rides. I sort of like bumper cars but I don't really go to Disneyland all that much unless if have nieces and nephews or people to take.
Anjelica Huston
#95. I do like the ocean wave, actually. I'm born under the sign of Cancer - the sign of the crab - so I like coastal areas and sunny beaches and such - although not the wide-open and deep seas.
Anjelica Huston
#96. Most of the book deals with things we already know yet never learn.
Huston Smith
#98. One of the difficulties of being a writer must be that you create drama that you can't live out. That's one of the wonderful things about acting.
Anjelica Huston
#99. When I was young, I ran to see Astaire and Rogers, Huston, Lubitsch - they were formative for me. I also read 'Flash Gordon' when I was 6, but if I were still reading it when I was 16, I'd have been an imbecile.
Lina Wertmuller
#100. For there is nothing quite so terror-inducing as the loss of sleep. It creates phantoms and doubts, causes one to questions one's own abilities and judgement, and, over time, dismantles, from within, the body.
Charlie Huston
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