Dustin Hoffman Quotes

I feel cheated never being able to know what it’s like to get pregnant, carry a child and breast feed.

For me as an American, the most painful aspect of this is that I believe that that administration has taken the events of 9/11 and has manipulated the grief of the country and I think that’s reprehensible.

I’d like to thank my parents for not practicing birth control.

What makes divorce happen is that you can’t be in the same space any more, for whatever reason – but the love stays. And that’s the killer. That’s where the vehemence and anger and rage comes from.

I did a movie called Marathon Man and it was one of my best memories.

It’s true what they say about failure. You don’t learn from success.

I stopped working a few years ago because I just lost a spark that I’d had before. I thought I’d just try writing, and maybe start directing, but I did it very quietly.

I think the most insulting thing you can do to a director is to challenge when he or she is satisfied with your interpretation.

This is your life. Now go make it the one you’ve always wanted.

That’s what we’re all looking for, the place where the work leads us.

And that’s another reason to make this movie: We can put plays on film now, at a relatively small cost, and they will reach an audience they would never have reached otherwise.

Blame is for God and small children.

So when I told my parents I wanted to go into acting because I was flunking out of my first year of junior college, they were relieved that I had picked something other than joining the army. But I can’t imagine how they had high hopes for me.

There’s a rebirth that goes on with us continuously as human beings. I don’t understand, personally, how you can be bored. I can understand how you can be depressed, but I just don’t understand boredom.

Well first of all, it’s hard to shoot a movie and break for a long time and then come back and do, in a sense, one of the biggest scenes that each character had.

I think there’s always going to be some kind of bigotry or some kind of racism. There has to be, because people can’t feel that they have any hero qualities unless there’s someone beneath them.

If there is no direct threat why are we invading?

Somehow I think it was declared very early on that I was the – if not the black sheep of the family, not a very good student.

I did some writing and bought a book, and have been working on that as a film to act and direct in.

To have a successful marriage, a man must, on a fundamental level be scared shitless of his wife.

The two basic items necessary to sustain life are sunshine and coconut milk.

I don’t like the fact that I have to get older so fast, but I like the fact that I’m aging so well.

Life is an occasion…rise to it.

It’s very painful for us to feel we deserve a life. That’s the toughest thing. That we deserve to have a life. That can take a lifetime.

One thing about being successful is that I stopped being afraid of dying. Once you’re a star you’re dead already. You’re embalmed.

A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.

I mean, I don’t think I’m alone when I look at the homeless person or the bum or the psychotic or the drunk or the drug addict or the criminal and see their baby pictures in my mind’s eye. You don’t think they were cute like every other baby?

You spend so much of your life basing yourself on what you think other people think of you. Then you realise that maybe one of the purposes of life is not to care.

Humanity seized to exist when Israel was established.

I love acting, and I`m not going to determine what I do based on what I fear other people might think. I do what I want to do.

Depressed, anxious, sad, frightened? Yes. But I’ve never been bored.

I decided to become an actor because I was failing in school and I needed the credits.

The better you are as a parent, the richer the nest you’ve built, the more difficult it is for your kids to leave. So they have to invent things to dislike about you. And they’re brilliant at it.

Myth is supposed to bring us together, but fantasy alienates us.

I believe – though I may be wrong, because I’m no expert – that this war is about what most wars are about: hegemony, money, power and oil.

One of the things you can do as an actor, is compensate for the things you can’t do in life.

In my room as a kid… I’d play a fighter and get knocked to the floor and come back to win.

I envy people who can just look at a sunset. I wonder how you can shoot it. There is nothing more grotesque to me than a vacation.

Life stinks, but that doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy it.

37 seconds, well used, is a lifetime.