Tony Curtis Quotes

While you're doing it, you don't really know what you're doing.

I've always believed that service to others is rent we pay for our time on this planet.

I look at everything in an artistic way.

My whole world before I joined the Navy was my neighborhood in the Bronx.

I wouldn't be caught dead marrying a woman old enough to be my wife.

If you don't know your gift, you've got no lift.

Like an opera singer, I am able to sing out my song in paint.

I was born in and worked in a period that could be called enviable.

Painting is much more than therapy to me its a way of life.

I want the public to know that it will be an honor for me to meet them and spend a few special moments with all those who helped me through my filmed career.

You wanna know the secret of life? The saliva of young girls.

I used to be good friends with my depression, saying oh I'm so depressed, or life is terrible.

Its not age as much as the experiences I have had.

If you know how to live in Vegas you can have the best time.

It is for the latter that I always wanted to be an actor: to play characters who are always on the move.

Every movie I've been in has ended up on television.

It's such a human condition, whether you're a great track star or a great knitting person or you paint watercolors - someone knows who you are.

I will always remember this summer day in Paris, when I was to perform a great acrobatic move. I can still see myself stepping on the ring of a packed circus along real performers.

They gave me away as a prize once - a Win Tony Curtis For A Weekend competition. The woman who won was disappointed. She'd hoped for second prize - a new stove.

Now I'm a painter. That was another opportunity I was able to pursue, I've been painting all my life, now it's become a second career because of my success in the movies.

I enlisted when I was a boy. The Navy looked after me like my mother. It fed me, took care of me and gave me wonderful opportunities.

Everywhere I go in the world, people know me and recognise me and really show affection for me.

I joined the Navy hoping to be submariner and ended up in the sub service aboard a tender in the Pacific.

I like Vegas for its spontaneity.

I don't know what organically grown chickens are; I've never seen one.

I enjoy being recognized whatever environment I'm in.

Art is an emotional experience

I can't sit around and wait for the telephone to ring.

I've made 122 movies, and I daresay there's a picture of mine showing somewhere in the world every day.

But where there is no art show, I would still be painting.

Every line, everything you do in life, should have a motive and a reason. Every one of us should have a motive and a reason, most of the time, to accomplish all the things that we want in life.

On kissing Marilyn Monroe: It's like kissing Hitler.

At 17, I dreamed of seeing the world. At 19, I had been around the world and back.

The government gave me enough money to go to acting school.

That so many people respond to me is fabulous. It is like having a kind of Alzheimer's disease, where everyone knows you and you don't know anyone.

I've been in the movies for 50 years, I've made 130 some-odd movies.

I'm world famous, everywhere I go there are people who love me because of I've been able to bring them some joy from the movies I've made.

Hollywood ... the most sensational merry-go-around ever built.

The service meant so much to me. You don't know privileged I feel and how lucky I am to have served.

When I was in bed with Marilyn Monroe, I was never sure before, during or after, where her mind was.

But my longevity is due to my good timing.

I've just opened a show in Florida, although I also have many pieces on display around the world.

The movie business is very twisted, out of site, out of mind, you know.

We're all brought up in a world that isn't the best place for us to be in once in a while. There are so many problems and we try to overcome them all.

Burt Lancaster was a very powerful and intriguing person. That essence of what he was, is the very thing that you and I see on the screen when we watch him.

Someone said to me, "Hey, what's it like kissing Marilyn Monroe?" I said, "It's like kissing Hitler. What are you doing asking me such a stupid question?"