Dustin Hoffman Quotes

The two basic items necessary to sustain life are sunshine and coconut milk.

Somehow I think it was declared very early on that I was the - if not the black sheep of the family, not a very good student.

Depressed, anxious, sad, frightened? Yes. But I've never been bored.

Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me... aren't you?

I wanted to be a jazz pianist, but I wasn't good enough. I got into city college because I didn't have the grades to get into university. I took acting because it was a way to get three credits. I just needed three credits and my friend told me to take acting because it was like gym - nobody fails you. I took it and that's literally how I got involved in acting.

This is your life. Now go make it the one you've always wanted.

I mean, I don't think I'm alone when I look at the homeless person or the bum or the psychotic or the drunk or the drug addict or the criminal and see their baby pictures in my mind's eye. You don't think they were cute like every other baby?

I believe - though I may be wrong, because I'm no expert - that this war is about what most wars are about: hegemony, money, power and oil.

I don't like the fact that I have to get older so fast, but I like the fact that I'm aging so well.

You spend so much of your life basing yourself on what you think other people think of you. Then you realise that maybe one of the purposes of life is not to care.

There's a new medical crisis. Doctors are reporting that many men are having allergic reactions to latex condoms. They say they cause severe swelling. So what's the problem?

There's a rebirth that goes on with us continuously as human beings. I don't understand, personally, how you can be bored. I can understand how you can be depressed, but I just don't understand boredom.

What makes divorce happen is that you can't be in the same space any more, for whatever reason - but the love stays. And that's the killer. That's where the vehemence and anger and rage comes from.

Blame is for God and small children.

One thing about being successful is that I stopped being afraid of dying. Once you're a star you're dead already. You're embalmed.

I love acting, and I`m not going to determine what I do based on what I fear other people might think. I do what I want to do.

Many actors want to play Hamlet and Macbeth. Ever since I became an actor, from the very beginning I just wanted to play a Shetland pony. I cannot explain why

If you can get out there and say I'm going to...I'm willing to fail at what I feel is right, that's it.

I knew I finally made it as a performer when I began hearing rumors that I was gay.

The Academy Awards are obscene, dirty . . . no better than a beauty contest.

I got into acting so that I could meet girls. Pretty girls came later. First, I wanted to start off with someone with two legs, who'd smile at me and look soft.

If you have this enormous talent, it's got you by the balls, it's a demon. You can't be a family man and a husband and a caring person and be that animal. Dickens wasn't that nice a guy.

I think the most insulting thing you can do to a director is to challenge when he or she is satisfied with your interpretation.

To have a successful marriage, a man must, on a fundamental level be scared shitless of his wife.

I walked out of the theater and started crying. My wife asked me, 'Why are you crying?' I said, 'Because I can't do that.' I didn't know how he did it. I've never seen anything like that. It's like this feat, this Rodin sculpture to me. It's like hearing an opera singer and the tears go down your face because it's not human what they're doing. It's like sounds of heaven.

37 seconds, well used, is a lifetime.

If you're waiting for the job, you're dead.

I envy people who can just look at a sunset. I wonder how you can shoot it. There is nothing more grotesque to me than a vacation.

We need to band together as a unit every day, especially to conquer the strength of the AIDS virus.

I decided to become an actor because I was failing in school and I needed the credits.

We're not allowed in the cutting room - and that's extraordinary. So, when a director is asking for certain nuances and colours and we feel that they're phoney, but we do it because the director asks for it, that's the one that they pick in the cutting room. And I contend that when you see a movie with bad acting, don't blame the actor... blame those guys in the cutting room because they like that take.

I feel cheated never being able to know what it's like to get pregnant, carry a child and breast-feed.

The truth is, the older you get, the less variety of parts you are offered. If you're a star and you've spent most of your career being able to take your pick of the litter, you notice when the offers start to diminish. You're too old to play leads, so you're offered the supporting role - but many stars don't want to make that transition. They see it as a sign of symbolic impotence. And that the audience will no longer regard them as a star. I love acting, and I'm not going to determine what I do based on what I fear other people might think. I do what I want to do.

The trumpet player, Ronnie Hughes, has still got his chops today but for some strange reason the culture doesn't call him because he's 83-years-old. And these people are in their 70s and 80s and 90s and came with such verve every day and would still be shooting these 10 and 12 hour days. So, that in itself made this an extraordinarily special occasion for all of us. It wasn't a job for the crew after a few days, it took on another tone.

A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.

I lived below the official American poverty line until I was 31.

There's too many interesting women I have…not had the experience to know in this life because I have been brainwashed.

One of the things you can do as an actor, is compensate for the things you can't do in life.

Now, I'm simply working with people I want to work with. I just want to have good working experiences and let the dice fall where they may.

In my room as a kid... I'd play a fighter and get knocked to the floor and come back to win.

There is something unnatural about marriage. These two people are not going to be the same people in a few years. The trick is to live your own life while sharing the same space.

Poverty is not dated. Homeless people have looked the same since the thirteenth century. Go back to the times of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Look at photographs. It's amazing. The face on a homeless person is timeless.

But I would reinvent myself if I could. As a sexy leading man! We all would like that, but I don't know how to.

I think 'retirement' goes hand in hand with people who make a living by having a 'job.' I don't think we-the .00001 percent of the population who are so fortunate to love passionately what we do-consider it a 'job.

Acting didn't solve much! If it did, I would have ended up much less crazy than I am today, but I'm not. At least for me, acting is a relief - a relief to be able to admit certain things about myself and disguise in my work, in my characters.

Canada is like a nice family living over a biker bar . . . They keep telling the downstairs neighbors to keep down the noise, people are trying to sleep.

Life stinks, but that doesn't mean you don't enjoy it.

I think one of the things you have to be aware of as an actor is that if you come on the set and see the director standing there mouthing all the words while a scene is going on, that's usually a very bad sign because it means the director has already shot the scene in his head. He knows exactly the rhythm and the nuances that he wants delivered in the line and you're not going to dissuade him.

Peter Pan, prepare to meet thy doom.

That's what we're all looking for, the place where the work leads us.