Jeremy Piven Quotes

I'm not a boy now. I'm a man, I hope. I hope I've had my artistic bar mitzvah somewhere.

Mercury poisoning sounds like a rich man's disease . . . like something you might get from the leather seats in your Lamborghini.

If someone mistakes your kindness for weakness, that's their fault - not yours. And it's OK to be a decent human being in this life.

If masturbation is a crime then I should be on death row.

Sometimes - this is a tough one - not everyone can handle the truth. Sometimes you have to take a beat. But if you can take that beat, and take the high road, it'll serve you in the long run.

The Dalai Lama was once asked for his favorite chant, and he said it was better not to have a favorite anything, which I think is a great thought.

Unless an entire row of people got up in the middle of a performance and left the theater in disgust, I felt as though I hadn't done my job.

We all have so many different elements inside of us and we're not all one thing.

I want to be radical on the inside, but not on the outside.

I have a place in Chicago and I get there as much as I can... The city is so unbelievably beautiful. It's one of the greatest cities on the planet. My heart beats differently when I'm in Chicago. It slows down and I feel more at ease.

I'm in the middle of just trying to impress my nieces, who think I work for the bus company because they saw a picture of me on a bus. I did an independent movie with Mark Pellington (I Melt with You), and then tried to impress my nieces again, by starring opposite Miley Cyrus (in So Undercover). So, basically I'm just trying to get some respect from my family.

When you do a television show in the States, you get the pilot, and then it's the great unknown. That's the way it is. It's this great leap of faith. It's the Russian roulette of art.

What's this? You're wearing the shirt of the band you're going to see? Don't be that guy.

People need to know you have to walk through that rejection, and it's only going to fuel you. If you can somehow look at it like it's a gift, you're just going to regroup, and work harder, and go deeper. So just embrace it.

You know the Greeks didn't write obituaries. They only asked one question after a man died: "Did he have passion?"

I'm just mystified and fascinated by women, and I'm still single. Hence all of that, and the fact that I celebrate them so much, I understand that I'm unevolved at this exact moment to share my life with one. I wouldn't inflict that upon anyone yet. But, I'm getting closer.

Well, here's all you need to know. Classes, nothing before 11. Beer, its your best friend, you drink a lot of it. Women, you're a freshman, so its pretty much out of the question. Will you have a car? ... Someone on your hall will, find them and make friends with them on the first day.

You're trying to figure out a way to go back in time and spend more time with your father. Who wouldn't want to do that?

My goal, everyone's goal is to get better at what we do.

When you try to worry about missteps and all that kind of stuff, that's not the healthiest way to be.

Everyone's journey is completely different.

I think people are gravitating towards these period dramas because I think they're looking for a simpler time.

Quitting the show was a complete anomaly in my life and my career. I've never missed out on anything. I relished the opportunity to be on Broadway... It's the holy grail for people like me.

I was in a play directed by my father, and I was doing a fight scene, and the choreography went haywire, and I flew backward over a chair and ripped my thumb all the way to my wrist and had to have surgery to sew up all the tendons in there.

I grew up on the stage, where you just throw yourself into projects and don't get in your own way.

I like to box. It's a great release.

The reality is that I'm an actor from the Midwest and I was 40 movies into it before I started 'Entourage'.

John Cusack and I have been friends since childhood, and the fact that we're in so many films together is, no pun intended, serendipitous.

I'm not a video game guy. I would rather throw around a football.

I never made more than $50 doing any play in Chicago. That was the way I grew up.

The stage is my love, it's where I started and where I do my best work.

One of the great things that you should never do that I learned from John Malkovich is to never judge your characters.

I feel, as a person, very uninteresting.

It's your job as an actor to fill out the blanks. I love doing that. To fill in the bones.

Yet the reality is that I'm a stage actor from the Midwest - probably the opposite of a shark agent.

You can't make people who you want them to be. That was a hard lesson for me.

For so much of my career I've been trying to find little things and make something out of it.

I wrote a script and I've been whispering in director's ears for a really long time and I'd love to direct.

I have been drumming my whole life.

I've been on the stage my entire life as an actor.

I had never really been around cards.

Sometimes in life, we have to continue to learn the same lesson until it sticks.

If you are an incredibly reactive person and you are working on your lowest level, and if you continuously give into your dark side and are angry, and screaming, and breaking things, and you do that for hours and hours on end, you are going to be incredibly exhausted. That's just the way life is.

I'm one of these people who would rather show you than tell you through the performance.

HBO does something that most networks don't do which is give a show a chance to find their voice.

I don't know if there's a lot of patience anymore. I think that could serve a lot of people.

I grew up watching PBS and wanting to be a part of it, just like HBO.

For the record, if you're not a stage actor, climbing onto Broadway and tackling something like David Mamet is not an easy thing to do.

Robert Rodriguez is a genius, and I'm a huge fan of his.

There are so many great directors that I haven't worked with and that I would love to work with.