Jack Nicholson Quotes

Everybody's old enough for a beer, ain't that right, Mule?

If men are honest, everything they do and everywhere they go is for a chance to see women.

There were points in my life where I felt oddly irresistible to women. I'm not in that state now and that makes me sad.

When you look at life retrospectively you rarely regret anything that you did, but you might regret things that you didn't do.

Life doesn't have to be about finding Osama bin Laden or becoming the president of the United States. Life is about the little things, which is one of the things you learn when you get older.

I didn't know that my sister was really my mother until I was thirty-seven years old. But life has taught me that there have been a lot of things that I didn't know.

You make me want to be a better man.

When they say I'm a great actor, I close my ears because it's not good for you to think that way.

I have a lot of vanity.

Frankly, I got into the movies because I like the movies a lot.

We are going as fast as we can as soon as we can. We're in a race against time, until we run out of money.

Just let the wardrobe do the acting.

Before I moved into the mainstream of American movies, I wrote a script as an experiment. I wanted to get very far away from the clichés about the three-act play - structure, development.

I'm the age where we didn't have television as kids. So when I saw my nieces and nephews watching Howdy Doody, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, and so forth, I thought the world had gone mad.

Well, a girlfriend once told me never to fight with anybody you don't love.

Just because you're perfectionist doesn't mean you're perfect.

Even in the most sophisticated person, it is the primitive eye that watches the film.

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.

I don't have any fear of intimacy, but rather thrive on it, which is rare in a public person.

When I was in high school, I earned the pimple award and every other gross-out award.

My motto is: more good times.

I used to think that one of the great signs of security was the ability to just walk away.

You look at someone long enough, you discover their humanity.

I envy people of faith. I'm incapable of believing in anything supernatural.

I'll tell you one thing: Don't ever give anybody your best advice, because they're not going to follow it.

I want my kids to have a deep, inner feeling that it's alright to be happy, that you don't have to be constantly manufacturing problems that you don't really have.

I wanted to be the best actor possible. I worked very hard at the craft of it.

Take caution in your tone, commander. I'm a fair man, but this -- heat is making me absolutely crazy.

If you get an impulse in a scene, no matter how wrong it seems, follow the impulse. It might be something and if it ain't - take two!

I don't even own a cell phone.

The blues and jazz will live forever... So will the Delta and the Big Easy.

Almost everybody's happy to be a fool for love.

I've always fought against being controlled and manipulated and stomped upon by circumstances.

Decent people shouldn't live here. They'd be happier some place else.

If I were an Arab-American, I would insist on being profiled. This is not the time for civil rights. There are larger issues for Americans.

Acting is everybody's favorite second job.

I think of a man and I take away reason and accountability.

I'm the last guy in the world to feel overlooked by the Academy.

Now comes the part where I relieve you, the little people, of the burden of your failed and useless lives. But remember, as my plastic surgeon always said: if you gotta go, go with a smile.

Never rub another man's rhubarb.

The average celebrity meets, in one year, ten times the amount of people that the average person meets in his entire life.

Women are sort of like motorcycle gangs with me. They get really shy and polite. I don't know why.

I assume most of the characters I play are exactly like me.

Staying together is a challenge. We all have to accept qualities in other people that aren't always exactly what we want or need.

I'm very fortunate in the sense that outside of cohabitating relationships and so forth, I've always got on just as well with women.

Through all permutations and youthful poetry, I came to believe that the film actor was the great "literateur" of his time.

I believe in making all movies at their most reasonable. That I get a lot of money as an actor is because nobody else will get it if I don't.

I've spent more time playing golf than anything else the last 18 years. Just wanted to be an 80s-shooter. Got there, too.

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.

I never had a policy about marriage. I got married very young in life and I always think in all relationships, I've always thought that it's counterproductive to have a theory on that.