76+ John Cusack Quotes On Education, Instagram And Better Off Dead

John Cusack is an American actor, producer, and screenwriter. He is known for his roles in films such as Say Anything, High Fidelity, Grosse Pointe Blank, and Being John Malkovich. He has also appeared in other films such as Sixteen Candles, The Grifters, and The Raven. Following is our collection on famous quotes by John Cusack on leadership, love, life.

Top 10 John Cusack Quotes

1. Being on a movie set is like one long financial crisis.
2. Maybe the absence of signs is a sign.
3. Get your sense of outrage back, and your sense of defiance and spirit back, and try to put these pieces together and confront the excesses of empire at every turn.
4. Radical Islam and US exceptionalism are in bed with each other. They're like lovers, methinks.
5. Usually I play people who just keep babbling on and on and on.
6. Celebrity is death --- celebrity -- that's the worst thing that can happen to an actor.
7. A lot of people know that something very drastic has happened to the very idea of America.
8. Don't buy into the corporate mythology that's been rammed down our throats for all these years.
9. Most movies, once the action starts there's no more characters. You say a couple of dumb lines and then there's just explosions until the end.
10. If you help manufacture an enemy that's really evil, you can point to the fact that it's really evil, and say, "Hey, it's really evil."

John Cusack Short Quotes

• I was a teen star. That's disgusting enough.
• Justice always has context.
• In the United States, we can talk about ISIS, but we can't talk about Palestine.
• These guys who talk about free markets, they're not ideologues; they're crooks.
• I have a good friend who's a Texas girl; Texas girls are a whole different breed.
• No, actors go out with actresses as a form of self-flagellation.
• Kitsch is more dangerous than it looks when taken to the extreme.
• I never wanted to come off as self-important.
• I'm not making any plans. I'm just going to let the universe surprise me.
• I'm a paranoid schizophrenic. I am my own entourage!

John Cusack Quotes About Love

I just love the process of working with other actors. It's like jamming with a musician, except it takes a little more effort to get to that place as an actor, because you have the cameras and lights and everything. But I love jamming with these people. — John Cusack

Probably Lloyd in 'Say Anything' is the closest to me - or to who I was at the time. It was just a great love story about people in the '80s, and we all tried to make it feel as real as possible. It was such a wonderful time. We didn't leave anything in the gym; we put it all out there. — John Cusack

I just love the process of working with other actors. — John Cusack

John Cusack Quotes About Life

Roy, the guy I play in 'The Grifters,' is a guy who had a very bleak life. His mother had him at 13, and then when she was 17 or 18 and he was 4 or 5, they were trapped in a small Texas town somewhere, and she was ready to do anything to get out. — John Cusack

I don't walk around talking about my life and spouting my philosophy to people I don't know. I mean, if I get to know them, I'll talk for hours. I guess I like a lower-key scene. — John Cusack

Poe had this curious kind of alchemical courage, where he took all the terrible things and terrors that happened in his life, all this shame and fear and pain, and turned them into great works of art. He was a complex, brilliant person who was just wired too tight. — John Cusack

Usually I do everything reverse. I practice something in movies and then I try it in real life. — John Cusack

I always liked it when people go back in time to discover things about themselves, like with 'A Christmas Carol' and you're getting a tour of your life by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future. — John Cusack

All the choices we make in our life are pointless. There’s no escaping the inevitable. — John Cusack

John Cusack Quotes About People

If you're looking at things with the right set of eyes, people are endlessly fascinating. And then, of course, if you look at it the wrong way, then the whole world is horrible and tedious and boring. That's the battle, really--to keep looking at the world in the right way. — John Cusack

There are some good people. But a good chunk of them will lie for no reason at all - it'll be ten o'clock and they'll tell you it's nine. You're looking at the clock and you can't even fathom why they're lying. They just lie because that's what they do. — John Cusack

Satire is meant to have teeth; satire is meant to be dangerous. But it also happens to be fun because subversion and telling the right kind of people to go to hell is supposed to feel good. — John Cusack

I was never a joiner. I tried - I had people I admired and liked and wanted to hang with, but I ended up starting a theatre company and that took me back to Chicago... I guess I wasn't a scenester in the end. Something must have worked out right, as I'm still here - but I'm only a binge socialite. — John Cusack

I think being self-referential is really narcissistic. Who's to say anybody's even thinking of you that much? But some of these movies that I've done, people still recite lines to me, even 20 years later. — John Cusack

Sometimes you meet people and you feel like you've known them for a long time. — John Cusack

It's supposed to feel good to throw a brick at the right people. There is a long tradition of naming and ridiculing and shaming and calling the villains what they are. Usually it was the artistocracy of the day and satire was the only way to speak truth to power. — John Cusack

The people who say they're for democracy want nothing to do with democracy. — John Cusack

I think good actors can sort of see into people and immediately you have a chemistry with them or not. It's like an affair with no mess. You don't actually consummate it, but you get to pretend, imagine what it would be like. — John Cusack

Hollywood is just a bunch of people going around in Learjets to other people asking them if they've got any money? Well, they might have if they didn't spend it all on jets. — John Cusack

John Cusack Famous Quotes And Sayings

I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that. — John Cusack

I grew up in Evanston and lived in Chicago for a long time, in Old Town and Wrigleyville. I did three films when I was in high school. The first was 'Class,' with Rob Lowe. I had a supporting role in that. — John Cusack

Did you know that the word person comes from the Latin word persona, which means mask? So maybe being human means we invite spectators to ponder what lies behind. Each of us will be composed of a variety of masks, and if we can see behind the mask, we would get a burst of clarity. And if that flame was bright enough, that's when we fall in love. — John Cusack

I don't agonize over decisions as much these days. The criteria of what's important to me is clear. The insecurity that you feel, and the paranoia that you feel, have been around for a long time - you know it's a liar because it's been lying to you all along - every time you start something new. — John Cusack

The situation in the film is like me going out to Venice Beach and talking to a homeless guy on the boardwalk, and 13 years later he's the president. — John Cusack

You just try to get the best jobs that you can get. Sometimes I produce my own movies, so that's your own sort of vision. That helps things. I don't know what it is. Probably just circumstance. I've definitely been aware of the fact that I want to do different things. — John Cusack

I think everything has some politics to it. It's just whether or not it admits to it. Politics is weird. I don't even know what that means any more. — John Cusack

My point was that it's hard to make good films, but I'm not under any illusion that you do all the time. — John Cusack

Every role you do is kind of a side of yourself. That's why they give you the part. — John Cusack

I don't tend to think in terms of a moral authority - be a good boy, do good things - more in terms of what feels right. — John Cusack

I never really saw myself as an activist but at some point the activist is the only moral position to take. — John Cusack

I think that taking night trains or meeting someone on the road is pretty romantic. I've done a couple of things like that. I've surprised someone in Paris. And hopefully, when you surprise someone, they're happy to see you. — John Cusack

I wanted to just be a filmmaker, and I thought I wanted to do all the aspects, and it seemed like as a producer was the best way to do it, because I could have... You never have control on a movie, but you have as much control as you can. You can push it through, and you can hire the right people. — John Cusack

When you see a culture where the intellectual architects of the invasion are not shamed for their behavior but rewarded within the mainstream media culture, black comedy, satire, absurdism is the only response. — John Cusack

The British keep employing me, and that makes me like them. It also makes me think they're very intelligent. — John Cusack

In the future, there is no future. — John Cusack

I think any actor can probably identify with being a professional liar. You don't always look at yourself that way, but I know a lot of days I do. — John Cusack

Nope, no sex scandals yet. But I am open to offers! — John Cusack

These people say free markets are the way to go, but wink, wink, the markets aren't really free. They're just a protectionist racket, and we have to pay for it all on every level. It's really quite extraordinary, and immoral, and illegal. These things need to be named, and shamed, and outed, and mocked, and prosecuted. — John Cusack

My dad had a commercial film company, so he had a videotape player before anyone. So he got Mel Brooks movies or Citizen Kane or some classic old movies. And every summer the revival house in Evanston would show the great films from the '50s and '60s and '70s. — John Cusack

I think that Poe is so resonant because he represents that part of us that is in misery or sorrowful or wants to explore the darkness. He wrote a great story called 'The Imp of the Perverse' about the instinct towards self-destruction. Poe is the godfather of Goth literature and that whole movement. — John Cusack

It seems to me that one thing people do over and over again is try to figure out how to get married, stay married, fall in love, how to rekindle all this stuff. It seems to me to be a pretty eternal theme so I don't know if you can get typecast from making movies about men relating to women. It seems to be what is going on on the planet a lot. — John Cusack

I think poets tell better history than historians. Historians lie all the time but the poets can get to truth of it. — John Cusack

I feel close to Lloyd in 'Say Anything'. He was like a super-interesting version of me. Only I'm not as good as him. Whatever part of me is romantic and optimistic, I reached into that to play Lloyd. — John Cusack

We've got to force the Democrats to get a spine. If they don't want to have a spine, we should throw them out. If they don't want to stand up for the rule of law, then I'm not a Democrat. — John Cusack

I don't agonize over decisions as much these days. The criteria of what's important to me is clear. — John Cusack

I guess maybe I'm idealistic. — John Cusack

The elderly have so much to offer. They're our link with history. — John Cusack

I was never into the popular school or clique or anything. Then I started doing movies when I was in high school, so then I got popular. Then the girls paid attention to you who didn't before. — John Cusack

The Sugar Frosted Nutsack is dizzyingly brilliant. Mark Leyner is a hyperkinetic shaman, who flies the banner of rum and candy and writes like a one-eyed feral bandit. His new book is supremely original, delirious and synapse-shattering. — John Cusack

All my romantic stories are a scrambled version of that first one. — John Cusack

The minute you realize that your options are unlimited, things just start falling into place all around you. — John Cusack

Once you have opened up prisoner interrogation, wiretapping, border patrol, jailing and the services of the military, when this has been turned into a for-profit business in this endless war, then we're in deep trouble. — John Cusack

Not only is America a country where torture is now policy. It's now outsourced. It's given to companies at a cost-plus basis. It's a triple whammy of surreal, absolute madness. — John Cusack

It never hurts to be involved in any political or activist organization. I can never see how participation would be a bad thing. The key is being true to what you participate with and who. — John Cusack

I think it's very improtant and healthy to tell differnt stories than the corporatist narratives we are being asked to swallow hook, line and sinker. — John Cusack

I think the more you expose yourself as a celebrity, the less interesting you are to watch in your work, because if you're putting yourself out there all the time, you're not holding anything back. — John Cusack

Life Lessons by John Cusack

1. John Cusack has demonstrated that hard work and dedication can lead to success, as he has achieved a long and successful career in acting.
2. He has also shown the importance of standing up for what you believe in, as he has been an outspoken advocate for progressive causes.
3. Finally, he has encouraged us to never give up on our dreams, no matter how difficult they may seem, as he has persevered through many challenges throughout his career.