David Duchovny Quotations

I lost my virginity when I was 14. And I haven't been able to find it.

The key is to get to know people and trust them to be who they are. Instead, we trust people to be who we want them to be - and when they're not, we cry.

I always dreamt of being a basketball player. A dream that only I believed in.

Anxiety is part of creativity, the need to get something out, the need to be rid of something or to get in touch with something within.

My entire life has been an attempt to get back to the kind of feelings you have on a field. The sense of brotherhood, the esprit de corps, the focus - there being no past or future, just the ball. As trite as it sounds, I was happiest playing ball.

It's not someone else's responsibility to honor my marriage. It's my responsibility.

On the one hand, people think they own kids; they feel that they have the right to tell the kids what to do. On the other hand, people envy kids. We'd like to be kids our whole lives. Kids get to do what they do. They live on their instincts.

One of the nice things about acting is that it allows you to open up to the other people within you.

You're raising a kid and you give it food and shelter and, most importantly, you give it the feeling that it's special. I think people react to celebrities like that - I mean, they treat celebrities like children.

Fame does lead to money, which I don't have a close relationship with. I'm the kind of guy who never sees the money - it all goes somewhere else. I don't understand it, I don't like to deal with it. I have a fear of not having it, because I grew up without it.

Willie Mays was the best ever. When I was in college I once made a catch like the one Mays made over his head. Sometimes when I'm lying in bed at night I think about it. It still makes me warm.

One of the scary things is that, when you're a kid, you look at your dad as the man who has no fear. When you're an adult, you realize your father had fear, and that you have it, too.

I don't think I'd ever be cruel to an animal.

I do not think that Mulder trusts any one other than Scully. He s very solitary. She is the only one who takes him seriously. I don t know if they re in love. In a way, their relationship is deeper than that, because they cannot live without each other.

I feel I have to work hard to nurture whatever talent I have as an actor. I feel like it's not natural to me. So I don't take it for granted... What I think is my natural ability - which is writing - I think I totally take that for granted.

For hundreds of years, that was the major form of entertainment: The grown-ups sat around and watched the kids play. Now they sit around and watch the television. The actors are the kids.

Our human nature is exactly the same as it was 500 years ago, let alone five years ago.

I wouldn't say we were doing that. I think we probably stopped thinking. Though it took a while to stop thinking.

It's rare in movies or even in life where somebody owns up to their needs. I guess in a relationship it's the only way it has a chance to survive it.

I don't think you could function on set if you think like that. I think once you start to think of the impact, then you're not really coming from a truthful place. I think the best thing to do for me is what's worked in the past.

I look back the old old ones [X-Files series], from the beginning, and I'm kind of mortified by my acting! But I'm kind of impressed by my enthusiasm. I'm just thankful that I got to become better at what I did, and that we didn't get cancelled in the first year.

In the general sense, there's a journey to be had. You either start at the top or the bottom for a journey to happen. Our movie has to start at the top and work it's way down. Or start at the bottom and work it's way up.

If young actors ask me things, I always tell them to get on set and watch how it's done. If you can, watch the people that you like, how they work.

We all know people for that length of time and people change. They mature. There is a certain expectation that a fictional character does not change. But you can't go back and play him the same way.

There are moments when you get out of your own head and you exist in the moment, and that can be good acting.

Action is pretty boring to do as an actor. Action and sex scenes are silly because it's all faking.

I don't discount belief. I just discount most of the things that people believe in.

You do hear some strange rumours floating around. One I've heard is that I'm allergic to metal.

I'm actually thinking about getting back to being a bath tub. I don't think anyone's ever quite segued into that.

A bath tub, apparently, was the first thing I wanted to be.

I really enjoy taking an outdoor shower.

If you're smart, you'll always be humble. You can learn all you want, but there'll always be somebody who's never read a book who'll know twice what you know.

Sex is great until you die, but it's never as great as it was when you were a kid, when it was a mystery.

Garry Shandling is someone I've publicly gone gay for, for jokes. Oh and anyone in the Twilight movies. I don't know any of their names, but all of them. The wolves, the vampires? They're all fantastic.

Humility is considered an un-masculine quality.

I don't make decisions based on money.

I don't need my phone to play me music. I need it to be a phone and an e-mail thing.

Linda Brewer's example is inspiring, colorful and potentially very funny. Her journey also exists firmly in the Heartland tradition of American success stories and comedies.

I dont like the idea of being eaten by a shark. I like to swim in the ocean, and I think much more about sharks than anyone should. I really resent the fact that my oceangoing experiences are ruined by Jaws.

Privacy is something I have come to respect. I think when I was younger I wanted to tell everybody everything, because I thought I was so damn interesting. Then I heard the snoring.

I'm not going to give up. I can't give up. Not as long as the truth is out there.

Whenever somebody says they need an angle for their story I always fear that they've got an idea and they want me to fit into it or they want me to come up with an idea myself or I'm supposed to be more revealing than I've been, and to me it just sounds like something I don't want to do.

In this age of media and Internet access, we are much more talkative than ever before.

At one time there were voiceover artists, now there are celebrity voiceover artists. It's unfortunate because these people need the money less than the voiceover artist.

I mean, you always want everybody to pat you on the back and tell you you're wonderful every time you do something; I think that's human nature.

I'm very proud of my Scottish blood.

If you have Darwin, Christ and Nietzsche, they're all going to talk at once. You need somebody who listens.

In high school and college, I was an athlete.

In the U.S., oddly, we have images of men as arrogant and aggressive.

It's always like you write a poem when you can't really say what you're trying to say.

It's hard to find scripts that know what they are from page one to page 115.

Part of being an actor is letting things come about organically as opposed to forcing them.

When I grew up, I was in Manhattan the whole time. But my kids have been all over the world.

When I started getting notoriety it was cheesy to appear in a commercial.

I was about 26 or 27 and it was imperative that I make a living right away and it's hard to make a living on stage, so I started in television and film.

My favorite parts of work as an actor and a director are those unplanned mistakes that do happen, because it's like catching lightning in a bottle. It's the best part of what we do.

If my work was good enough, I would never have to do publicity.

I don't mind close-ups, I like them, but they're kind of forceful - you see a lot, you get a lot of information in a close-up. There's less mystery.

If I were gay, you know. I think Woody Allen is one of a long list of men I might go gay for

If Fox Mulder discovered that Larry Sanders was a clone? I think he would stab him . . . but it wouldn't be with an ice pick.

I really like gratuitous nudity. I hate when people go, 'I'll only do it if it makes sense for the movie'. It never makes sense. So I like it - the more gratuitous the better.

I got married a bit late, I agree. In any other period of history I'd have been dead at that age and they'd have assumed I was gay. Like Michelangelo, or Leonardo da Vinci. But I was a late developer. I didn't go through puberty until I was 35.

I'm half Jewish, half Scottish. It's hard for me to buy anything.

Everybody gets the tattoo they deserve.

I'm the one usually wearing the dress, which is what I would've preferred, but they wouldn't let me. It's been 15 years since I did that and my ass isn't as good as it used to be.

TV directors just aren't sexy for some reason, Although, you know, Rob and Kim [Manners] are very sexy in my eyes.

I don't want to know what happens in any movie that I go to see.

A lot of times passion projects or films are difficult to make because they don't have proven directors attached to them.

The critical mind is the creative mind.

I had to work in one of the most beautiful ski resorts in the world for almost three weeks. Pity me.

I'll instinctively know that I identify with a character.

I'm always trying to perfect the romantic comedy, though.

We like to keep the sexual tension underplayed, especially between the Smoking Man and me. Once we thought he was my father . . . it got more interesting.

Patrick Stewart was the first internet sex symbol without hair but pileggi always thought it was him.

Maybe the best things about celebrity are the things like being able to get that seat on the plane that you wouldn't normally get, but that's kind of like cheating.

I wouldn't succeed at musical theater.

You can go through life and actually speak your mind and do it in an articulate fashion and with a really intelligent point of view.

The only problem with Mitch [Pileggi, the actor who plays Skinner] is that his bald head means there's nothing to hold onto when he starts to buck.

I've run into certain geniuses of individualism - they are very few and far between - who live their lives completely on their own terms; they are very powerful and have a great amount of happiness. We all should aspire to that.

I enjoy trying to figure out the best way to compliment the picture and not overpower it.

I drive an electric car.

My whole life, Ive wanted things before I was ready. I was always pushing for the next job, the next success. I was so focused on achieving and the path that I was missing some great point about life.

Women's fashion is a subtle form of bondage. It's men's way of binding them. We put them in these tight, high-heeled shoes, we make them wear these tight clothes and we say they look sexy. But they're actually tied up.

Dogs are the broccaflower of the animal kingdom.

Larry Grobel's interviews are informative and insightful without being pandering or intrusive. You get the sense at all times of both intelligence at work-the interviewee's and Grobel's-both inspired by the encounter.

Actually, I have an interest in finishing my Ph.D., but I just know I never will.

I think patience is a skill and I wish I had it.

I don't like watching people work if they're making art.

I enjoy comedy and I hope that people enjoy watching me do it.

I don't know how anybody gets better at anything aside from doing it.

I mean, there's chemistry in life and there's acting chemistry. I'm not saying they're the same thing, but they're as mysterious.

Games, by nature, have more plot options and non-linear qualities than TV and film.

People think celebrities don't have to worry about human things like sickness and death and rent. It's like you've traveled to this Land of Celebrity, this other country. They want you to tell about what you saw.

Approaching a part or thinking about taking a part, I never think, 'Is that person like me?'

Usually, when I act, I try to forget the words and let them come, and just find my way through them.

People always love and respect characters who speak the truth, even if the truth hurts.

As we age, there are different things that become important to us and that means that different aspects of our character come to the forefront; certain aspects recede. And that's fun. It would be shitty to have to imitate myself.

Most journalists expect me to answer all their questions about aliens and spaceships.

There is never a personal-life connection between my characters and myself. I'm a professional and I can access what I need to access, so there's no bleed-over. I didn't need to believe in aliens to play Mulder. As for my personal life, everything is fantastic right now.

I like my computer. But I don't know how to use it as well as the 10-year-old daughter.