Ethan Hawke Quotes

I did one sci-fi movie. I did 'Gattaca.' I liked 'Gattaca' because that was always the kind of science fiction I really dug, the non-action oriented sci-fi.

Life's hard. It's supposed to be. If we didn't suffer, we'd never learn anything.

Depression is a real demon in the woods for a lot of creative people, you know? It's part of what the documentary is trying to be about for me, finding balance, where the beauty that is attainable in the creative arts can be matched with the scratchy roughness of regular life.

Don't you find it odd," she continued, "that when you're a kid, everyone, all the world, encourages you to follow your dreams. But when you're older, somehow they act offended if you even try.

In New York, you've got Donald Trump, Woody Allen, a crack addict and a regular Joe, and they're all on the same subway car.

Read. It makes you more intelligent. It’s that simple. We all see the universe through the tiny keyhole of our own eyes, and every book is another keyhole from which you can gaze.

I take pleasure in the little things.

Double cheeseburgers, those are good, the sky ten minutes before it rains,the moment your laugh turns into a cackle. And I sit here, and smoke my Camel straights, and I ride my own melt.

I auditioned for Robert Redford once and I was so starstruck I couldn't even speak. I had a mic wire at a screen test clipped to me and then I got kind of nervous and I paced in a circle and then took a step and tripped and fell on my face. You just have to forgive yourself and keep going on.

The older I get, the more I realize how rare it is to meet a kindred spirit.

I'm horrified to admit that I just love Salinger.

I was devastated to find out that other people feel the same way.

I met a lot of famous people when I was about 24.

And none of them seemed very appealing. And so I didn't know why I would struggle to be that kind of person.

The Woodstock Film festival is among the finest of a dying breed: a festival that isn’t trying to sell you anything, but simply and beautifully celebrating the art & craft of filmmaking.

Happiness is in the doing not in getting what you want.

Give your heart to everybody you meet. The rest is pretense.

I really did Regression to work with Alejandro [Amenabar].

I found him very interesting. His movie, The Others, is one of the better scary movies of the last period of time.

I kill flies, I eat meat, you know, whatever.

A lot of American actors when they do Shakespeare put on a phoney English accent and it drives me crazy. You're always fighting against the idea that only the British know how to do Shakespeare.

The more kind of head trippy sci-fi. I always like that. I was a big 'Twilight Zone' freak.

In all of our society, but especially in Hollywood, there is an obsession with perfection that can lead to self-loathing and neurosis and all that kind of stuff.

Some people burn out, and some people like Clint Eastwood, he was a wild, international movie star in his 30s, and he's doing the best work of his life now. Go figure.

And the joy of my job - and it's really true - is that it's constantly evolving and changing.

I never thought that I would be labeled something like Generation X because of that movie ( Reality Bites ). I had no idea going into it, and it wasn't a label I could relate to.

If you say to yourself, okay, I will not self-destruct.

I don't have to be the most talented person. I don't have to be everybody's best friend, I don't have to be liked, I don't have to be successful, well, one thing I will not do is self-destruct. If you take that out, your chances for success just went up like 800 percent.

The experience on that movie (Dead Poets Society) was, for lack of a better term, life-altering. Peter Weir has a unique talent for making movies that are intelligent but also mainstream. I've never been terribly successful at doing that.

You need to be a good screen partner.

It's very meaningful to me to be a part of great acting performances.

I was being taken around by a press agent at the Venice Film Festival at age 18.

Was it fun? Sure. But it was a dangerous path to be walking on as far as having a substantive life. Because the casualty rate at the Venice Film Festival for 18-year-olds? High.

It was fantastic to be on the set again with Denzel (Washington) and Antoine (Fuqua) and then to have the situation be so different. We weren't making a sequel to Training Day. We were in the middle of the desert riding around on some horses.

A good movie humanizes people.

You don't need other people to affirm that you're a valuable person.

I've had different opportunities in my life, but I've tried to maintain the spirit of an amateur. Our culture roots everything in the barometer of success and how much money you make. But if you really just aspire to a life in the arts, it's really not a barometer at all.

Emma Watson is my kids' favorite actor on the planet.

They never took me more seriously than when I was working with her.

We all have this fantasy of finding our one true love who's going to be the perfect fit. It's just not a reality.

I think having nature be a part of people's lives helps all of us see ourselves as part of something larger.

The older I get, the more obvious it is that you're not really in control of your life, you're a part of a larger wave, no matter who you are.

It just makes sense to remember gratitude and the place that gratitude should have in your life, and that none of us are owed these wonderful experiences, and we should always make the best of them.

To get to be somebody who gets to love what they do for a living, that's so rare, and so there must be some kind of price you have to pay.

I remember being a kid and sleeping over at my friend's house and staying up late and watching 'Nosferatu.' Vampire movies are supposed to be secret and bad. They should be rated R.

I think that as soon as you think of yourself as a famous person or anything like that, you're objectifying yourself in some weird way.

My job - and it's really true - is that it's constantly evolving and changing.

When I was doing the Chet Baker movie I was obsessed with playing the trumpet, and to my absolute shock I haven't picked the trumpet up since we wrapped. It was so much work. I thought I was going to keep playing the rest of my life, 'cause it was fun, it's just a lot of work. And it's a really unique job that exposes you to a lot.

If you can understand the inner life, then you can wear the uniform, the tattoos, or whatnot and realize that the things that are different about us become superficial.

I did this movie, Predestination, and it's one of my favorite movies I've ever made, because sci-fi really lets you talk about ideas in a way that's not pretentious.

You know, I auditioned for 'Titanic.' Sometimes I muse on what would have happened. That would have been such a different life.

It's interesting to get older and realize that part of your job growing up in this profession is to help the next generation. More and more, with Boyhood and with Ellar Coltrane and with Emma [Watson], I start to see that role. There's no better way. Nobody wants advice, so you can't really give it. You just have to try to wish them well on their journey.

I've had a lot of experience in independent film, and about how to choose.

You've got to be very discerning about where you put your five bucks, and where you cut and what you don't cut.

I like [that] there's a certain inherent drama to those jobs that is exciting to tell stories about and it's still real life. I'm a little less interested in the current fad of being obsessed with superheroes and things that are so out of the box.

Well, there's a great Marlon Brando quote that to do something well you have to spiritually marry your director. You have to be making the same movie they are in that you have to try to help their imagination be better, and more full, and more fully realized, but you can't have a different imagination because then you end up - and you see this a lot in movies - where it feels like they were making five different films.

I'm always trying to look for how I can find human stories that aren't just dramas.

When you make a movie with Alejandro Amenábar, he very quickly.

.. it was very clear you're kind of operating in his dream universe.

Sometimes people, their creative drive comes from an energy to try to heal themselves.