Ethan Hawke famous quotes

Depression is a real demon in the woods for a lot of creative people, you know? It's part of what the documentary is trying to be about for me, finding balance, where the beauty that is attainable in the creative arts can be matched with the scratchy roughness of regular life.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Art #Real #People

Sometimes in the life of an actor you're not getting offered any jobs that speak to you. The trouble with acting is that you're only as good as your opportunities.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Jobs #Opportunity #Acting

Don't you find it odd," she continued, "that when you're a kid, everyone, all the world, encourages you to follow your dreams. But when you're older, somehow they act offended if you even try.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Dream #Growing Up #Kids

My goal is to tell good stories. And to try as best I can to do something new with acting. To learn from the past and to be a relevant artist. To make stories that are interesting and contemporary and to tell some kind of emotional truth.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Artist #Past #Emotional

I'm horrified to admit that I just love Salinger. I was devastated to find out that other people feel the same way.
-- Ethan Hawke

#People #Way #Salinger

The writing process was some of the most exciting and rewarding moments of my life. It felt a lot like being in a band.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Writing #Band #Moments

The older I get, the more I realize how rare it is to meet a kindred spirit.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Spirit #Realizing #Kindred Spirit

The most creative and most periods of my life that were, had the most growth, were the ones where I was perceived to be failing. Perceived success is a, is really hard 'cause it doesn't really, it's not asking you to grow, see failure is asking you to grow.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Creative #Growth #Asking

If you can channel the best part of you that is bigger than yourself, where it’s not about your ego and not about getting ahead, then you can have fun and you aren’t jealous of others. You see other people's talent as another branch of your own. You can keep it rooted in joy. Life is long and there are plenty of opportunities to make mistakes. The point of it all is to learn.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Fun #Mistake #Jealous

People are conditioned to just you know, like, you know we're like little birdies going to the bird feeder you know, or the little cows going to the salt lick. We just like what we've seen before.
-- Ethan Hawke

#People #Bird #Littles

Success isn't measured by what you achieve, it's measured by the obstacles you overcome.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Success #Overcoming #Obstacles

If you say to yourself, okay, I will not self-destruct. I don't have to be the most talented person. I don't have to be everybody's best friend, I don't have to be liked, I don't have to be successful, well, one thing I will not do is self-destruct. If you take that out, your chances for success just went up like 800 percent.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Successful #Self #Chance

I auditioned for Robert Redford once and I was so starstruck I couldn't even speak. I had a mic wire at a screen test clipped to me and then I got kind of nervous and I paced in a circle and then took a step and tripped and fell on my face. You just have to forgive yourself and keep going on.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Circles #Forgiving #Wire

You don't need other people to affirm that you're a valuable person.
-- Ethan Hawke

#People #Needs #Valuable

I kill flies, I eat meat, you know, whatever.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Meat

Sometimes people, their creative drive comes from an energy to try to heal themselves.
-- Ethan Hawke

#People #Creative #Trying

There is no trick to writing a believable love story, a heartbreaking scene or real-sounding dialogue. All you need is to tell the truth. It’s always heartbreaking.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Real #Writing #Heartbreaking

Your development as a person should coincide with your development in all aspects of your life.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Development #Should #Aspect

Directing is like putting together a collage.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Together

Sometimes people save the best part of themselves for their art.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Art #People #Sometimes

Read. It makes you more intelligent. It’s that simple. We all see the universe through the tiny keyhole of our own eyes, and every book is another keyhole from which you can gaze.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Book #Eye #Intelligent

I believe in the healing restorative power of art and communication. And so that's probably my rule. But that doesn't apply to bedtimes. And stuff like that.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Art #Believe #Communication

Everyone has to pay their child support, and no matter if you're a Hollywood actor or anyone else, it's always a little bit more than you want to pay.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Children #Support #Hollywood

I have totally hitched my wagon to the horse of storytelling, and the idea that none of us know why we're born, or why we're gonna die, or what we're planted here, or what's on the other side of the galaxy, or when time began, or when time end. The whole nature of reality is pretty up for grabs, really.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Horse #Reality #Ideas

It's so hard for every young person, trying to figure out the adult you want to be.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Trying #Adults #Want

The constant buzz and pressure and noise and static of the Internet, and the way it makes young people feel makes it difficult to grow up and develop the way one might want to.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Growing Up #People #Want

Time is what creates trust.
-- Ethan Hawke

Time is so much a part of what makes you close to people.
-- Ethan Hawke

#People

The older I get, the more obvious it is that you're not really in control of your life, you're a part of a larger wave, no matter who you are.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Matter #Wave #Obvious

It's difficult to make any kind of action movie that might be unique or worth watching.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Unique #Might #Action

It was never in my dreams to make my personal life anybody else's business.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Dream #Personal Life

My relationship to reality has been so utterly skewed for so long that I don't even notice it any more. It's just my reality.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Reality #Long

Nothing teaches you like getting leveled. And I got leveled in my early 30s. Nothing went exactly the way I thought it would.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Way #Teach

The more kind of head trippy sci-fi. I always like that. I was a big 'Twilight Zone' freak.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Twilight #Freak #Kind

As a young man... you don't know anything about yourself. And add on to that, you're on the cover of magazines. People are interviewing you about what you think. You feel like a real phony.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Real #Men #Thinking

I did one sci-fi movie. I did 'Gattaca.' I liked 'Gattaca' because that was always the kind of science fiction I really dug, the non-action oriented sci-fi.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Fiction #Action #Kind

I've had a lot of experience in independent film, and about how to choose. You've got to be very discerning about where you put your five bucks, and where you cut and what you don't cut.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Independent #Cutting #Bucks

One of the things that separates a good genre movie from a bad genre movie, I always think, ironically, is when you care about the people. The dime a dozen ones are where you don't have any awareness of the character.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Character #Thinking #People

In your mid-twenties, the paint is still wet on who you are.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Twenties #Paint #Stills

I think it's my job to risk looking foolish. One of the things I've learned from the actors I've worked with is you don't get something for nothing. If you don't risk looking foolish, you'll never do anything special.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Jobs #Thinking #Risk

I always felt that a marriage works best at a farm... where you're together and everybody has clear-cut roles; they have chores, 'you take care of this' and you know. But it's hard.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Cutting #Together #Roles

'Brooklyn's Finest,' this is the kind of movie that's why I want to be an actor, to tell real-life stories. This is where I feel my job is, to interpret life.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Jobs #Real #Stories

It is very difficult for any couple who are married if both people are ambitious. I don't know if it's just too hard to be married to a woman that wants to be a movie star.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Stars #Couple #People

When you do 'Before Sunset,' you know while it's a limited audience, there was a very small group of people that love 'Before Sunrise.' You feel a certain pressure to make sure that you uphold a level of quality that has been a bar. You set a bar and you have to at least match it.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Sunset #People #Sunrise

When you start becoming really successful, the demons start to tempt you - the demons of vanity and self importance, drug abuse, the feelings of fraudulence. But, it's also a thrill. That's what I found weird.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Successful #Vanity #Self

Right now the only people I can really fall in love with are people who don't really, truly want me around. Now why do I do that?
-- Ethan Hawke

#Falling In Love #People #Want

I have had so many bad auditions.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Auditions

I'd be lying if I said I had confidence in every choice I've made, that I have faith in every film I do on every shot.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Lying #Choices #Have Faith

I remember being a kid and sleeping over at my friend's house and staying up late and watching 'Nosferatu.' Vampire movies are supposed to be secret and bad. They should be rated R.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Sleep #Kids #House

I think having nature be a part of people's lives helps all of us see ourselves as part of something larger.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Thinking #People #Helping

I think that as soon as you think of yourself as a famous person or anything like that, you're objectifying yourself in some weird way.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Thinking #Way #Objectifying

I thought I was so much smarter than everybody. And I'm not.
-- Ethan Hawke

The biggest problem in my life is trying to be the kind of man that I want to be, the father that I want to be, and how to process the failure of my marriage.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Father #Men #Trying

I think that if you walk through this life and I end up being a bad father, then it won't matter anything else I achieved in my life. It will all be irrelevant.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Father #Thinking #Matter

To get to be somebody who gets to love what they do for a living, that's so rare, and so there must be some kind of price you have to pay.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Pay #Kind

The thing that makes a great genre movie is one that's not just entertainment, not just horror or sci-fi or whatever. The ones I love are the genre pictures with some subversive message underlying it all.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Entertainment #Messages #Horror

The girls who like me aren't the ones I like. Or, if I do and they want to commit, I suddenly need tons of time with my friends.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Girl #Needs #Want

I was being taken around by a press agent at the Venice Film Festival at age 18. Was it fun? Sure. But it was a dangerous path to be walking on as far as having a substantive life. Because the casualty rate at the Venice Film Festival for 18-year-olds? High.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Fun #Taken #Years

Seeing the play ( A Lie of the Mind ) clearly is part of why I wanted to direct it. I see hope at the end of this play. People talk about how dark the play was, but I feel like, if you really look at the darkness, you're able to go through it, and you realize that you can handle dark moments in life and that everything will be all right.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Lying #Dark #Play

Some people burn out, and some people like Clint Eastwood, he was a wild, international movie star in his 30s, and he's doing the best work of his life now. Go figure.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Stars #People #Figures

Right now, if you're interested in being a dramatic actor, they're not making that many just regular dramas. Movies have to have some other thing going on.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Drama #Actors #Dramatic

The kindest compliments I have ever heard are when cops tell me Training Day and Assault on Precinct 13 inspired them to become cops. The funniest compliments I have ever heard are when people tell me that 'I love your band Sugar Ray.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Funny #Love You #People

But the truth is, I've never wanted to be a movie star - and I've been pretty clear about that.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Stars #Truth Is #Movie Star

All that stuff with the tabloids is a kind of luxury tax I pay for all the good things I do in my life.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Luxury #Tabloids #Pay

I never thought that I would be labeled something like Generation X because of that movie ( Reality Bites ). I had no idea going into it, and it wasn't a label I could relate to.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Reality #Ideas #Would Be

The experience on that movie ( Dead Poets Society ) was, for lack of a better term, life-altering. Peter Weir has a unique talent for making movies that are intelligent but also mainstream. I've never been terribly successful at doing that.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Successful #Intelligent #Unique

A lot of American actors when they do Shakespeare put on a phoney English accent and it drives me crazy. You're always fighting against the idea that only the British know how to do Shakespeare.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Crazy #Fighting #Ideas

I've had different opportunities in my life, but I've tried to maintain the spirit of an amateur. Our culture roots everything in the barometer of success and how much money you make. But if you really just aspire to a life in the arts, it's really not a barometer at all.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Art #Opportunity #Roots

The thing that really breeds career longevity in this profession is doing good work. You can make $20 million a movie, but does that mean you'll still have a job when you're 60? It's a profession that eats people up and wants constant turnaround, so you have to dedicate yourself to learning and making the most of whatever gift you may have.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Jobs #Mean #Careers

In all of our society, but especially in Hollywood, there is an obsession with perfection that can lead to self-loathing and neurosis and all that kind of stuff.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Self #Perfection #Neurosis

I met a lot of famous people when I was about 24. And none of them seemed very appealing. And so I didn't know why I would struggle to be that kind of person.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Struggle #People #Kind

Its difficult to do a genre film well, and it doesnt matter if youre talking vampire movies or Dawn of the Dead or The Thing or Escape From New York. Those kind of movies, they understand what the old-school B-movie is supposed to be, they get the throwback of it.
-- Ethan Hawke

#New York #School #Talking

If I do three movies in a year, I don't feel like acting ever again.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Years #Acting #Three

In New York, you've got Donald Trump, Woody Allen, a crack addict and a regular Joe, and they're all on the same subway car.
-- Ethan Hawke

#New York #Car #Cracks

Give your heart to everybody you meet. The rest is pretense.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Heart #Giving #Pretense

I'm magically delicious.
-- Ethan Hawke

I take pleasure in the little things. Double cheeseburgers, those are good, the sky ten minutes before it rains,the moment your laugh turns into a cackle. And I sit here, and smoke my Camel straights, and I ride my own melt.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Rain #Sky #Laughing

With this sunrise somehow I felt I was exactly where I was supposed to be... Have faith, the light seemed to announce.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Light #Sunrise #Have Faith

When I woke up I was naked. I have this one oddball idiosyncrasy: Sometimes in my sleep I take off all my clothes.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Sleep #Clothes #Naked

If you don't give inspiration an opportunity, it will never arrive.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Inspiration #Opportunity #Giving

Everything is so finite but that’s what makes our time and specific moments so important.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Important #Moments #Finite

There's something about knowing life is finite that makes it so precious.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Knowing #Life Is #Finite

At every turn, when humanity is asked the question, 'Do you want temporary economic gain or long-term environmental loss, which one do you prefer,' we invariably choose the money.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Loss #Long #Humanity

I don't know what has happened to movies, but lately every movie is at least 20 minutes too long. It used to be that if you were three hours long it was because it was epic - a movie about Gandhi; something with very important subject matters.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Epic #Long #Important

I can't tell you how many times in the '90s I'd meet somebody, we'd be having a nice time, and they'd sigh and go, 'This is exactly like Before Sunrise.' And I'd have to get up and leave.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Nice #Sunrise #Before Sunrise

Happiness is in the doing not in getting what you want.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Happiness #Getting What You Want #Want

We all have this fantasy of finding our one true love who's going to be the perfect fit. It's just not a reality.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Reality #Perfect #Fantasy

The Woodstock Film festival is among the finest of a dying breed: a festival that isn't trying to sell you anything, but simply and beautifully celebrating the art & craft of filmmaking.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Art #Dying #Trying

I've always watched actors on the red carpet getting drunk and making idiots of themselves and now I'm happy to join their ranks
-- Ethan Hawke

#Drunk #Actors #Red

If you can understand the inner life, then you can wear the uniform, the tattoos, or whatnot and realize that the things that are different about us become superficial.
-- Ethan Hawke

#Tattoo #Different #Uniforms