Anthony Hopkins Quotes

No expectations. Ask nothing, expect nothing and accept everything, and life is very well.

A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

Once you accept the fact that there's nothing to fear, you drill into the primal oil well. I believe when we do things without fear, we can do anything. As long as you don't worry about the consequences.

My philosophy is: It's none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier.

The whole point of courage, to overcome your fear.

That's the interesting thing, when courage bleeds through the fear.

You're not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you, Agent Starling?

Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore; only the life I have lived. The pain now is part of the happiness then.

If you’re an alcoholic or a drug addict, we flirt with death.

We pull ourselves to the brink of destruction and if we’re lucky we pull ourselves back. We all have that in us.

I don't like mushiness. I'm a very emotional person but I hate sentimentality. I don't like great demonstrations of emotion. But as I'm getting older, I'm getting much more open about all that.

I am able to play monsters well. I understand monsters. I understand madmen.

I'm very much a loner. I don't like long relationships with people and I always keep people at a distance.

I read a lot, that's my main hobby. I've got an iPad which I store books on and I read voraciously. I'm a slow reader but I'm obsessive. I make references, underline things, cross-reference. I'm an autodidact.

If you don't follow through on your dreams, you might as well be a vegetable.

The movie industry is full of crazy people who think that they are god.

I know how to be strong. I know how to be ruthless. It's part of my nature. I wouldn't be an actor if I wasn't.

I love to read, and so I've been reading everything I can, not intensely, but I love to read so I read "Origin of Species" by Darwin and I can't make head or tail of E=MC squared by Einstein, but I try to baffle my way through that.

I was trundling around with my inadequacies, and inner pain and loneliness.

I yearned, desperately, to be something. I yearned to get out from where I was ... some deep discontent within myself, actually some deep dislike of myself.

As a Welshman that can't sing, I never feel more proud to be Welsh than when I hear the Treorchy Male Choir - the Master Choir of them all. If I could sing I would apply for membership myself.

I just learn my lines, go on set. Do my preparation, whatever that is. Have a cup of coffee. Say hello to everyone. And be friendly. "Action" - and then do it.

Getting old ain't for the faint of heart.

I have no interest in Shakespeare and all that British nonsense.

.. I just wanted to get famous and all the rest is hogwash.

My weak spot is laziness. I have a lot of weak spots - cookies, croissants; my wife is always lecturing me about this, I tend to put it all down as habit or it's just acting.

I think one of the things you have to have is a respect for the camera, a real respect, and a real love for it, and to really, when I say take it seriously, quote 'seriously', I mean not patronize it. It's a big mistake to patronize it and think it's a third rate medium, because it's not, it's a great art form.

I never make conscious decisions. If my agent says to me, "It's a good script," I'll do it. I don't plan. I've got a lot of things to do. I'm at the roulette table and my luck seems to be running at the moment. I might as well stay there until it runs out.

I do my job, and I do what I’m paid to do and I’m always prepared.

I prepare by learning the text so well that when I show up, I’m relaxed and the performance sort of happens. Now whether that’s good or bad, I don’t know... Whatever I say is going to sound very egocentric and self centered anyway so I’d better shut up.

When I was a young guy, I knew everything.

Now I know very little. I know less and less as the time goes on.

We're just blades of grass, and when we go, we go, we never come back;

one life . . . maybe that's true. But I tend to believe that this is not all there is. Because my life has been like a shadow of something deeper. And I've experienced that many times.

If you have high expectations you're going to get resentments and all kinds of tension.

My life has been a kind of mystery to me.

By all my logical, linear thinking I started out in school as a little boy, I didn't have a clue about anything. What they were talking about in school, couldn't play sports, couldn't learn, and I was bottom of the class.

Women never really care to face the truth when their hearts are involved.

I'm more and more convinced that life is a dream. What has happened to me is surely a dream.

I'll do anything to keep everyone laughing.

Things get too intense on film sets. I remember on The Elephant Man, I used to imitate a cat without moving my lips. David Lynch would say, "Cut! Sorry, we've got a noise somewhere on set." Everyone would be looking around for this cat.

Mortality is the great rescuer, it finally takes you out of everything, and that makes life good.Read Carl Jung. It makes life richer because this is it; none of us know where we go and this is the fun of it.

I wanted revenge; I wanted to dance on the graves of a few people who made me unhappy. It's a pretty infantile way to go through life - I'll show them - but I've done it, and I've got more than I ever dreamed of.

I think doubt is a very healthy way to live.

Hitchcock was such a master of putting on screen things that made you uneasy.

Somebody once asked him what frightened him most, and he said the police. He came from a poor background. I think he understood those fears.

Certainty is the enemy of mankind. If you're certain about everything, you have the Inquisition, you have Nazis and you have - that certainty is something to be guarded about.

Multiply it by infinity and take it to the depths of forever, and you will still have barely a glimpse of what I'm talking about.

I'd like to wake up and look like Brad Pitt in the morning, but I don't.

I look in the mirror, and I see me.

On his Hannibal Lector mask: I've got it at home. I wear it to bed every night.

You look closely enough, you'll find that everything has a weak spot where it can break, sooner or later.

You still wake up sometimes. You wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the lambs.

Whether it's overeating or it's overworking or over-sex or whatever it is, alcoholism, drug addition, we push ourselves to the brink and then pull back because it's kind of exciting.

I think all those actors from that generation, like Bogart - they were wonderful actors. They didn't act. They just came on and they did it, and the characters were wonderful.

My weak spot is that I don't like analyzing so I tend to be a bit lazy;

I tend to get bored quickly, which means I must be boring.

There are people who are convinced supernatural forces are at work, but I've no idea. I suspect 'possession' might be a psychological thing, like schizophrenia. We all think we know things, but we don't know a damn thing. Whether God exists, why we're here... Nobody really knows any of it.

I've played a lot of parts. But I don't look at my feeling is that this is a job. It's given me a good living.

Danger is the spice of life and you’ve got to take a risk now and then…that’s what makes life worthwhile.

I hate taxing my mind with analysis. I'm not a good analyst. I cannot talk about acting. I hate talking about it. I hate talking about analyzing.

You have to have humor. If you don't have humor and you take yourself seriously, you're dead in the water. You have to be jostled. I love it. You've gotta have a laugh. It's better than working for a living.