Steve McQueen Quotes

Racing is life. Everything else is just waiting.

Sometimes you have to say goodbye to the things you know and hello to the things you dont.

Every time I start thinking the world is all bad, then I start seeing people out there having a good time on motorcycles. It makes me take another look.

I'm not sure that acting is something for a grown man to be doing.

The world is as good as you are. You've got to learn to like yourself first.

I believe in me. I'm a little screwed up, but I'm beautiful.

When I believe in something, I fight like hell for it.

I hope you find what you're looking for.

I need to have a reason why I'm doing something. Otherwise I'm lost.

The Navajos have a saying they live by: 'A land where there is time enough and room enough.' I want that, too.

Everyone deserves not just to survive, but to live.

I live for myself and answer to nobody

I don't want to talk about nonsense because it doesn't help me.

Sometimes you have to bend with the breeze or you break.

If I hadn't made it as an actor, I might have wound up a hood.

People try to contain things by putting them into categories. I don't.

I liked being in the Marines. They gave me discipline I could live with. By the time I got out, I was able to cope with things on a more realistic level.

Nobody trusts anyone, or why did they put tilt on a pinball machine.

Acting is like racing, you need the same concentration. You have to reach inside you and bring forth a lot of broken glass. That's painful.

Often the best way to relax is just to go back to work.

I love creating images, of course, because I'm an artist.

When a horse learns to buy martinis, I'll learn to like horses.

One of the things that make motorcycling so great is because it never fails to give you a feeling of freedom and adventure.

I worked hard, and if you work hard you get the goodies.

Stardom equals financial success and financial success equals security. I've spent too much of my life feeling insecure. I still have nightmares about being poor, of everything I own just vanishing away. Stardom means that can't happen.

When you're racing, it's life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting.

Anything that doesn't make sense, I don't want to give too much of my brain to.

Stardom equals freedom. It's the only equation that matters.

The camera movement should be like a cat jumping onto a table - with just enough amount of effort and that's it. That's enough.

You see, I don't believe in that grabbin' and grabbin' and stuffin yourself and not givin' anythin' or puttin' it back.

I don't like to put too much effort into things. I find that once you get involved with special effects it is no longer about what is happening in front of the camera and I really want to concentrate on what is happening in front of the camera, like the man apparently peeing on the surface of the screen.

I have difficulty putting words in peoples' mouths. The best dialogue is very, very thin dialogue; you let people improvise and then basically you record what they've improvised and then write it down.

I always feel I'm an amateur. I don't most of the time know what I'm doing.

I think as an actor, you're more like a dancer, and you have to use your body. I don't understand all these questions about nudity. It's a nonsense. He's an actor, an artist, so get on with it.

The best thing about making films is the time spent making them. When I see works that I've made, I always think what a great time I had making them. The films remind me of that time.

I've got a feeling I'm leaving stardom behind, you know. I'm gradually becoming more of a filmmaker, acquiring a different kind of dignity from that which you achieve in acting. After all, I'm no matinee idol, and I'm getting older. I don't think I can be doing my kind of thing in the seventies; I want to be on more of the creative side of business.

I really don't like to act. At the beginning, back in '51, I had to force myself to stick with it. I was real uncomfortable, real uncomfortable.

I want people to do what they want to do because when they feel comfortable it seems to translate better on screen. It is when you put people in a straitjacket that it doesn't seem to translate very well at all. The individuals I work with are usually people I know.

I find it difficult to breathe when l'm in the space. There seems to be no oxygen. I want to put people into a situation where they're sensitive to themselves watching the piece.

Ill never be as good an actor as I want to be....but I'll be good.

I deal with certain things in my work because of who I am. I make work in order to make people think.

I don't know why it (stardom) happened-but it's kinda nice. Maybe it's because I'm someone off the streets. Maybe people relate to me.

The person is being confrontational.

When I walk out into the street or go to the toilet, I don't think of myself as being black. Of course, other people think of me as black when I walk into a pub. Obviously being black is a part of me.

There is no right or wrong angle for something. The idea of putting the camera in an unfamiliar position is simply to do with film language. Sometimes it is spectacular, sometimes it is ugly, sometimes it is uninteresting.

As far as art and filmmaking is concerned, I don't see there's any separation; it's just one continuous thing.