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
It [TV] is the cancer of film. It's why people can't be educated to film. In the late '60s, we expected to see a movie or two every week and be stimulated, excited and inspired. And we did. Every week after week. Antonioni, Goddard, Truffaut - this endless list of people. And then comes television and home video. I know how to work exactly for the big screen, but it doesn't matter what I think about the art of movie-making versus TV. - Jack Nicholson
It's difficult for people sometimes to recognize when they're happy. People sometimes seem to me to be afraid to be happy. - Jack Nicholson
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
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
My point of view, while extremely cogent, is unpopular. . . . That the repressive nature of the legalities vis-a-vis drugs are destroying the legal system and corrupting the police system. - Jack Nicholson
No issue is more compelling than the air we breathe, be it hot or cold, be it hawk or human. - Jack Nicholson
Once you've been really bad in a movie, there's a certain kind of fearlessness you develop. - Jack Nicholson
Played tennis for years. But you can't improve at tennis after you're 50. You get to be in your 40s, and suddenly you're a doubles player. - Jack Nicholson
The average celebrity meets, in one year, ten times the amount of people that the average person meets in his entire life. - Jack Nicholson
There has long been a bemoaning of the lack of opportunity to make films that are anything but explosions or the ladling on the pea soup or whatever you want to call it. You can hardly make a movie where somebody isn't a murderer or a rapist or, if it's a "Fried Green Tomatoes" that isn't some wistful thing on this, that or the other thing. - Jack Nicholson
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
Well, a younger woman is a type, but not necessarily a type for me. And what is a younger woman? I mean, I'm pretty old. Almost everyone is younger. - Jack Nicholson
Well, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I haven't been a rogue most of my life. - Jack Nicholson
When we make mistakes they call it evil. When God makes mistakes they call it Nature! - Jack Nicholson
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
You know, I think I understand what you're like now. You're very beautiful and you think men are only interested in you because you're beautiful. But you want them to be interested in you because you're you. The problem is, aside from all that beauty, you're not very interesting. You're rude, you're hostile, you're sullen, you're withdrawn... oh, I know- you want someone to look past all that at the real person underneath. But the only reason anyone would bother to look past all that is because you're beautiful. Ironic, isn't it? In an odd way you're your own problem. - Jack Nicholson
You're anachronistic when you know that your feelings aren't going to have any effect on anything. - Jack Nicholson
I don't find the same things funny that many other people seem to find funny. I don't really respond to sex jokes and things like that. Some of my friends look at me and go, "Come on, Nic, that was my best joke. Why aren't you laughing?" I go, "I really don't know why I'm not laughing. I'm sort of out of sync with it." So I'd have to find something that was really about weird human behavior for me to laugh. - Nicolas Cage
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