Philip Seymour Hoffman Quotes

I know I wasn't as handsome as some other guys, but I was OK with that.

All over the world, young men and young women will always dream dreams.

The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool.

The ambition, the drive, the wanting to be the center of attention, the wanting to succeed... They're all inside me somewhere.

You must be really bad, because it is a puzzle. Creating anything is hard. It’s a cliché thing to say, but every time you start a job, you just don’t know anything. I mean, I can break something down, but ultimately I don’t know anything when I start work on a new movie. You start stabbing out, and you make a mistake, and it’s not right, and then you try again and again. The key is you have to commit. And that’s hard because you have to find what it is you are committing to.

I didn't go out looking for negative characters; I went out looking for people who have a struggle and a fight to tackle. That's what interests me.

Study, find all the good teachers and study with them, get involved in acting to act, not to be famous or for the money. Do plays. It's not worth it if you are just in it for the money. You have to love it.

Don't let people treat you like a cigarette, they only use you when they're bored and step on you when they're done. Be like drugs, let them die for you.

I work constantly but I work at a lot of different things. You know, I run a theater company in New York, I direct plays, act in plays, in movies, so I try to keep it eclectic.

The film is made in the editing room. The shooting of the film is about shopping, almost. It's like going to get all the ingredients together, and you've got to make sure before you leave the store that you got all the ingredients. And then you take those ingredients and you can make a good cake - or not.

No one wants to be pretentious about what they do or take it seriously, because that is just weird.

I think you should be serious about what you do because this is it. This is the only life you've got.

To be loved, I think, is the thing that gets you up in the morning.

Creating anything is hard.

There's something in the very small minutia of life that tells us something about the big, big picture that we see every day all over the place, and so I think the more specific and creative and revelatory you are in the micro, the more powerful the macro will be.

My image of Jesus is someone who is exciting...Were he alive today, he would be causing havoc!

I've been reading a bunch of stuff lately - like Joseph Campbell - that has made me realize that people in our cultural, especially in the liberal community, often go in search of a foe. It's like we always need a hill to climb up or something to push against, or we feel as if we're not working constructively in the world.

I'm probably more personal when I'm acting than at any other time. More open, more direct. Because it allows me to be something that I can't always feel comfortable with when I'm living my own life, you know? Because it's make-believe.

Creating something is all about problem-solving.

I think good art, if I could be pretentious enough to say, I think good art deals with the micro to explain the macro.

My love for the theater has always been a priority. That hasn't changed. I got into acting that way. The film work that came up was really a surprise.

Actors are responsible to the people we play. I don't label or judge. I just play them as honestly and expressively and creatively as I can.

A lot of people describe me as chubby, which seems so easy, so first-choice. Or stocky. Fair-skinned. Tow-headed. There are so many other choices. How about dense? I mean, I'm a thick kind of guy. But I'm never described in attractive ways. I'm waiting for somebody to say I'm at least cute. But nobody has.

One person's religion is another person's cult.

My soul is in good shape.

I have a fine level of recognition in the business and among the acting community now, so I consider myself one of the lucky ones. If I didn't think that, there would be something wrong with me. I'm grateful and thankful for what I've got.

It's important to say that actors can't act alone, it's impossible. What we have to do is support each other.

If you're a human being walking the earth, you're weird, you're strange, you're psychologically challenged.

I always thought I'd be a New York theater actor, riding my bicycle to rehearsal. That was all I ever wanted.

For me, acting is torturous, and it's torturous because you know it's a beautiful thing. I was young once, and I said, that's beautiful and I want that. Wanting it is easy, but trying to be great - well, that's absolutely torturous.

You know the circus performer who spins the plates in the air you know, and he'll spin six or seven plates in the air? Acting sometimes is kind of that guy spinning all those plates in the air but in your head and in your body.

Well, I think everyone struggles with self-love.

Sometimes I have a great day of filming and sometimes the theater strikes me better. It just depends.

Films are always a fiction, not documentary. Even a documentary is a kind of fiction.

Vanity is something that will only get in the way of doing your best work, and ultimately if you're truly vain you care more about your work than how you look in your work. I actually consider myself a pretty vain guy when it comes to that.

I got sober when I was 22 years old.

Success isn't what makes you happy. It really isn't. Success is doing what makes you happy and doing good work and hopefully having a fruitful life. If I've felt like I've done good work, that makes me happy. The success part of it is all gravy.

My favorite thing about acting is being alone and going through the scripts and working on it and getting ideas and asking myself questions, looking outside myself for them and researching and getting to the bottom of something and being creative with it as an actor and how to express it in a creative fashion. That's my favorite part. And, the actual acting of it.

Film's hard when you don't have any relationship with the director at all and you just show up. Then you really are just a gun for hire.

Learning how to die is therefore learning how to live.

There’s a period of time in your life when I kind of look back, and I’m like, was I happy, or was I just not aware?

To act well isn't an easy thing.

I think directors should be confident in their leadership capabilities. I think directors should be confident in what they want to do.

Yeah, writers do hate writing.

I had insecurities and fears like everybody does, and I got over it. But I was interested in the parts of me that struggled with those things.

Being unemployed is not good for an actor. No, it isn't, no matter how unsuccessful you are. Because you always remember getting fired from all the restaurants. You remember that stuff very, very strongly.

There are a lot of things going on with my life right now that don't just have to do with career. So I have a hard time making decisions about work. That's really a luxury problem.

I've never been on a cruise.

In film, you have to let go sometimes.

I always knew where I needed to go but I sometimes had a problem getting there, so I had to work harder at it. Once in a while I'd wanna take off the blouse and heels because I'd get that "I just wanna be a guy" feeling I had when growing up.