Top 100 Nicholson's Quotes
#1. His white admiral's jacket gleamed with medals, nut Loki wasn't exactly wearing it regulation-style. It was open over a black T-shirt featuring Jack Nicholson's face from The Shinnig. The caption read: HEEEERE'S LOKI!
Rick Riordan
#2. ...linen is a fabric that wrinkles like Jack Nicholson's balls without Botox.
Anna Kendrick
#3. Politics are beautiful. They enable a community to live collectively with one another. It's not about stabbing each other in the back; it's about enabling people to reach their dreams and pursue happiness.
Ben Nicholson
#4. If you see 'The Shining' with Jack Nicholson, you remember him not only because he is Jack Nicholson and because he does a wonderful job, but because he is a threat. The bad guy is someone people will have in their minds forever if it's a good bad guy.
Jordi Molla
#5. Once you've started a film you don't become a wet noodle. You must have that conflictual interface because you don't know, and they don't know. It's through conflict that you come out with something that might be different, better than either of you thought to begin with.
Jack Nicholson
#6. It's not like I'm starved for company - I have a few very good lady friends - but there's only a certain amount of times a woman wants to see you and never go out for dinner.
Jack Nicholson
#8. What is destiny more than an end result? If there is such thing as destiny it must change. With every thought we think, every word we utter, every choice we make our destiny adjusts to fit the consequences of that choice.
Eve S. Nicholson
#9. I like people who are minimalist with their words. Jack Nicholson thinks a lot then says something, and it's always spot on. Nelson Mandela is the same.
David A. Stewart
#10. Most writers are secretly worried that they're not really writers. That it's all been happenstance, something came together randomly, the letters came together, and they won't coalesce ever again.
Nicholson Baker
#11. Most of the early part of an actor's career, you do the jobs you get.
Jack Nicholson
#13. I wanted to apprentice myself to the dailiness of the war's beginning phase. It's truer and more frightening that way - when you're afloat on a little dingy in the midst of it all.
Nicholson Baker
#14. And then there is, of course, always, and inevitably, this spume of poetry that's just blowing out of the sulphurous flue-holes of the earth. Just masses of poetry. It's unstoppable, it's uncorkable. There's no way to make it end.
Nicholson Baker
#15. God creates us free, free to be selfish, but He adds a mechanism that will penetrate our selfishness and wake us up to the presence of others in this world, and that mechanism is called suffering.
William Nicholson
#16. I think it's sad that there seems to be one definition of beauty in Hollywood/New York. It's such a cliche, but I think it's true that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes.
Julianne Nicholson
#17. I really like the way that Jack Nicholson [acts] in particular works. I like the fact that he takes enormous risks. He's an enormously disciplined actor who seems to be totally capable of dealing with the business as a business and yet drop it totally when he's working.
Tim Curry
#18. E.B. White's essays are the best things I've read about Maine - especially the one in which he's not sure if he can go out sailing any more in his sloop.
Nicholson Baker
#19. It's hard to make a living at independent films, at least in my experience. It can be hard to be really creatively fulfilled in some television. Between the two, I get a bit of both.
Julianne Nicholson
#20. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you're bought and sold in the marketplace.
Jack Nicholson
#21. With comedy, you have to do it right. In a drama, there's a lot of different ways to succeed in a moment. But comedy comes from reality. You can't try to be funny.
Jack Nicholson
#22. There's a time and place for the Kindle, and I own one now and have books on it that I don't otherwise have. But I don't find that my hand reaches out for it the way it does for a trade paperback, or (in the middle of the night) for the iPod Touch.
Nicholson Baker
#23. Someone stop him!' 'He's gone too far!' 'He's just a boy - he'll kill himself!' 'Grab
Simon Nicholson
#24. It's true that I don't rearrange that much in the fiction, but I feel if you change even one name or the order of one event then you have to call it fiction or you get all the credits of non-fiction without paying the price.
Nicholson Baker
#25. Satire is fascinating stuff. It's deadly serious, and when politics begin to break down, there is a drift towards satire, because it's the only thing that makes any sense.
Ben Nicholson
#26. I've always understood money; it's not a big mystical thing to me.
Jack Nicholson
#27. I'm an actress and I want to act, and I'm a mom and I want to be with my kids, and it's trying to find a way to do both.
Julianne Nicholson
#28. I prefer reading e-books on a high resolution LCD screen - like the iPod Touch's - although the pixel density could and should be much higher.
Nicholson Baker
#29. But spending your life concentrating on death is like watching a whole movie and thinking only about the credits that are going to roll at the end. It's a mistake of emphasis.
Nicholson Baker
#30. I don't want to direct a movie as good as Antonioni, or Kubrick, or Polanski, or whoever. I want it to be my own. I think I've got the seed of it and, what's more, that I can make movies that are different and informed by my taste.
Jack Nicholson
#31. Weeds don't need planting in well-drained soil; they don't ask for fertilizer or bits of rag to scare away the birds. They come without invitation; and they don't take the hint when you want them to go. Weeds are nobody's guests: More like squatters.
Norman Nicholson
#32. So what he supposed to do? Grab Bobbie's ax and make like Jack Nicholson in The Shinning? He could see it. Smash, crash, bash: Heeeeeeere's GARDENER!
Stephen King
#33. There's a period just before you start a movie when you start thinking, I don't know what in the world I'm going to do. It's free-floating anxiety. In my case, though, this is over by lunch the first day of shooting.
Jack Nicholson
#34. I don't play golf competitively. I tell everybody that I cheat so they won't gamble with me. That's why you can't watch football. Everybody's gambling. They don't want to watch the game; they watch the spread.
Jack Nicholson
#35. I don't know if this is a true statistic, but I heard somewhere that there are three times as many single women over forty as single men. That's what we got from the women's movement. The chickens have come home to roost.
Jack Nicholson
#36. I think that's what distinguishes Schmidt, really. In the movies now, so much of what is appealing to an audience is the dramatic or has to do with science fiction, and Schmidt is simply human. There's no melodrama; there's no device, It's just about a human being.
Jack Nicholson
#37. The first role I ever played I had the lead and it's pretty much stayed that way, though people take great relish in calling me a character actor, which I am. There are a lot of short parts I could play, but I only do them when they are central to the idea of the movie.
Jack Nicholson
#38. Time keeps no measure when true friends are parted, No record day by day; the sands move not for those who, loyal-hearted, friendship's firm laws obey.
Jack Nicholson
#39. It's a slight stretch of the imagination but most people are alike in most ways so I've never had any trouble identifying with the character that I'm playing.
Jack Nicholson
#40. When I was seven, I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with my mom. When Jack Nicholson was strapped to the table getting electroshock treatment, my mom burst into tears. She said it reminded her of her life, and I was stunned, because I didn't know my mom had been nominated for an Oscar.
Christopher Titus
#41. You can just drift unhappily towards this vision of heaven on earth, and ultimately that is what architecture is a vision of: Heaven on earth, at it's best.
Ben Nicholson
#42. It's troubling to see how often Winston Churchill is a proponent of massive programs that are really aimed at civilians - starvation blockades and chemical warfare stockpiles and so on.
Nicholson Baker
#43. I met Jack Nicholson when I was about 10 at a party of my uncle's, and it wasn't so much that I knew his films because I was small, but he wore sunglasses inside at night and I thought that must mean he was very important and was suitably star struck by his charismatic presence.
Emilia Fox
#44. As soon as you start doing that - changing things - it seems self-evident to me that you've entered the world of make-believe. If you pretend that it's true, and use your own name, you are misleading people. Fiction is looser and wilder and sometimes in the end more self-revealing, anyway.
Nicholson Baker
#45. A lot of people measure a man by what he's got. I've decided to measure myself by what I can give up.
Geoff Nicholson
#46. The Irish and British, they love satire, it's a large part of the culture.
Ben Nicholson
#47. In this industry, there are only two ways up the ladder. Rung by rung or claw your way to the top. It's sure been tough on my nails.
Jack Nicholson
#48. Liberalism is the right to question without being called a heretic. That's what America did for the world.
Jack Nicholson
#49. What's the first image that comes to mind when you think of a mental hospital? Jack Nicholson in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' right? We need to change that perception, and places like this one are doing that.
Deborah Norville
#50. What's beautiful is all that counts, pal. That's all that counts.
Jack Nicholson
#51. When it's over for a woman, it's over. You're not getting an appeal.
Jack Nicholson
#52. One's head is finite. You pour more and more things into it - surnames, chronologies, affiliations - and it packs them away in its tunnels, and eventually you find that you have a book about something that you publish.
Nicholson Baker
#54. There's no point dwelling on what might or could have been. You just have to go forward.
Jack Nicholson
#55. It's the post-literate generation that is most disturbing to a movie-maker. The explosions and the knifings. People like to go to what's hot and you can't get past a certain gross unless you involve children who go more than once.
Jack Nicholson
#56. In fact, when they wake up in the morning, they're Jack Nicholson or Robert De Niro or Josh Brolin. And it's built-in, but they think it's all this other stuff. But it's not. They'd be great if they didn't think about their part or if they did think about it.
Woody Allen
#57. Anyway, she sings like a mad tropical bird, and it's just a fondue of molten wanting and grieving and the sadness of the large naked swinging breasts and soft olive skin and everything that you wish you could remember and feel and know.
Nicholson Baker
#58. I'm fairly well off. I can't poor-mouth that away from people's sensibilities about me, which is something I worry about as an actor. But it would be real stupid of me to do something for the money.
Jack Nicholson
#59. I like shelves full of books in a library, but if all books become electronic, the task of big research libraries remains the same - keep what's published in the form in which it appeared.
Nicholson Baker
#60. I was spending three days literally just kibitzing with Jack Nicholson at a table! It was heaven! And talk about a normal guy. My God, he was just so real and cool and relaxed and fun. And he was a great performer. He's such an actor. He really was so focused on every moment. It was great.
Peter Jacobson
#61. Comedy is much harder, it's a lot more exacting. You can't just be real and you can't just use the same kind of techniques you use to fill up a regular scene.
Jack Nicholson
#62. There are major influences on us that people are not aware of. There are big lies that nobody's willing to discuss.
Jack Nicholson
#63. I want my kids to have a deep, inner feeling that it's alright to be happy, that you don't have to be constantly manufacturing problems that you don't really have.
Jack Nicholson
#64. True, the name of the product wasn't so great. Kindle? It was cute and sinister at the same time - worse than Edsel, or Probe, or Microsoft's Bob. But one forgives a bad name. One even comes to be fond of a bad name, if the product itself is delightful.
Nicholson Baker
#65. I never had a policy about marriage. I got married very young in life and I always think in all relationships, I've always thought that it's counterproductive to have a theory on that.
Jack Nicholson
#66. When I left school I went on trip around the world - I only got as far as Australia, but like a bloody fool I cut it short because of a girl. It's probably one of my big regrets in life.
Ben Nicholson
#67. To put it another way, pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Why must it be pain? Why can't he rouse us more gently, with violins or laughter? Because the dream from which we must be wakened, is the dream that all is well.
William Nicholson
#68. Jovan: "I'll pass any test you present me. I assure you."
Eviona: "I wonder what the best test of pride would be."
Eve S. Nicholson
#69. I have mainly been interested in acting. I think it's a great job, a fine way to live your life.
Jack Nicholson
#70. Then the weeks rolled by in a sinister psych ward haze filled with white-coated orderlies and rocking whack-job patients torn straight from some old Jack Nicholson film, all anti-psychotic meds and padded lonely cells ...
Shannon Celebi
#71. I'm just interested in meditating on certain ideas, and I like to draw: that's my way of thinking.
Ben Nicholson
#72. 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' is a movie that I just find flawless. Jack Nicholson ... I just saw 'The Shining' again the other day; he's so brilliant. He's such a brilliant actor, just unbelievable.
Michael Biehn
#73. I think the Greeks invented sports as an antidote to philosophy. In sports there are absolute rules. It's not, What about this? What about that? Either you're safe or you're out. It's ten yards or it's not. It's in the hoop or out of the hoop. It's certain.
Jack Nicholson
#74. I do pray. I pray to something ... up there. I have a God sense. It's not religious so much as superstitious. It's part of being human, I guess.
Jack Nicholson
#75. Everybody's old enough for a beer, ain't that right, Mule?
Jack Nicholson
#77. I just know that sameness, repetition, and conceptualizing are the acting craft's adversaries, and it seems more intelligent to start off within a framework where those things are, to some degree, taken out of your hands.
Jack Nicholson
#78. My dad is a Jack Nicholson lookalike and a frustrated performer, my mother's into reading and poetry. I suppose the thing I owe them most is my confidence.
Michael Sheen
#79. It's very easy to go down, so always live up. Incline yourself upward.
Jack Nicholson
#80. When they say I'm a great actor, I close my ears because it's not good for you to think that way.
Jack Nicholson
#81. There's probably no one who understands Method acting better academically than I do, or actually uses it more in his work. But it's funny - nobody really sees that. It's perception versus reality, I suppose.
Jack Nicholson
#82. Had Dr. Seuss been a slightly insane pornographer, he might have written a book like this.--reviewing Nicholson Baker's House of Holes
Tom Bissell
#83. When I am cast in a movie where I feel that the woman's part is more interesting, I usually start thinking about Spencer Tracy and Fred Astaire. They seem to be the most clear actors when working with women.
Jack Nicholson
#84. services as a tree trimmer.92 In the fall of 1975, while still promoting Cuckoo's Nest, Nicholson played a very small part in his pal Sam Spiegel's production of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon, based on the life of MGM wonder boy Irving Thalberg, who made Metro the dominant
Edward Douglas
#85. Kids are life's only guaranteed, bona fide upside surprise.
Jack Nicholson
#86. Once you've been really bad in a movie, there's a certain kind of fearlessness you develop.
Jack Nicholson
#87. It's difficult for people sometimes to recognise when they're happy. People sometimes seem to me to be afraid to be happy.
Jack Nicholson
#88. I usually don't get too bogged down with my personal problems because that's a one-way street if you get yourself into a negative frame of mind and only see the dark side of life.
Jack Nicholson
#89. Engineering, I think you can pick up. [A data scientist's] curiosity is built-in
Scott Nicholson
#90. Everyone pretty much acknowledges that he's the man, and I still feel that underrates him.
Jack Nicholson
#92. Any chance you might sit on my face?'
'Carnal Knowledge'
'That's the stuff.'
'No, I mean 'Carnal Knowledge, the movie. Jack Nicholson says that to Ann Margret when they first meet. She's a skater.'
'Well, is there?'
'Are you always this direct?
Linda Banana
#93. There's no really signature Leo DiCaprio role, like Jack Nicholson is Jack Nicholson no matter what movie he's in.
Dennis Christopher
#94. I wasn't a babe in the woods. I'd watched a lot of stars, from James Dean to Brando, and I'd seen everybody alive work at MGM. I had a certain old-timer's quality, even though I was young and new, and drew on what I believed before I made it.
Jack Nicholson
#95. That's what I like about the movie business: you're always in contact with wonderful and interesting people.
Jack Nicholson
#96. I'm not a huge scary movie kind of guy; like, I don't do slasher movies, because I'm really squeamish. But if I had to pick a favorite, it would definitely be 'The Shining' with Jack Nicholson. Not only is that a scary movie, it's just a flat out classic.
Brendan Robinson
#97. Printed books usually outlive bookstores and the publishers who bought them out. They sit around, demanding nothing, for decades. That's one of their nicest qualities
their brute persistence.
Nicholson Baker
#98. There's a tacit agreement today that the white male is the only legitimate target for any and all satire, criticism, and so forth. And we pretty much just accept it.
Jack Nicholson
#99. You can tell it's a poem because it's swimming in a little gel pack of white space. That shows it's a poem.
Nicholson Baker
#100. I'm such a perfectionist. I always feel overpraised or whatever. In the abstract, I know I'm a good person, a good professional. But it's nice to be noticed a little bit, ain't it?
Jack Nicholson
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