Denzel Washington Quotations

You pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too. That's a part of it.

In any profession it gets to be a grind.

Black or white good parts are hard to come by. A good actor with a good opportunity has a shot; without the opportunity it doesn't matter how good you are.

Where I think the most work needs to be done is behind the camera, not in front of it.

You don't know when you're being watched. That's one of the weird things about celebrity. It's my least favorite part of acting, celebrity.

I'd be more frightened by not using whatever abilities I'd been given. I'd be more frightened by procrastination and laziness.

I made a commitment to completely cut out drinking and anything that might hamper me from getting my mind and body together. And the floodgates of goodness have opened upon me - spiritually and financially.

I say luck is when an opportunity comes along and you're prepared for it.

My faith helps me understand that circumstances don't dictate my happiness, my inner peace.

You have to grab moments when they happen. I like to improvise and ad lib.

Man gives you the award but God gives you the reward.

My mother used to tell me man gives the award, God gives the reward. I don't need another plaque.

I'm very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That's my cultural historical background, my genetic makeup, but it's not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.

I never really had the classic struggle. I had faith.

If you have an enemy, then learn and know your enemy, don't just be mad at him or her.

If you don't trust the pilot, don't go.

It's simple: You get a part. You play a part. You play it well. You do your work and you go home. And what is wonderful about movies is that once they're done, they belong to the people. Once you make it, it's what they see. That's where my head is at.

When I was a child I thought I saw an angel. It had wings and kinda looked like my sister. I opened the door so some light could come into the room, and it sort of faded away. My mother said it was probably my Guardian Angel.

I think a role model is a mentor - someone you see on a daily basis, and you learn from them.

The time to worrying about flying is when you're on the ground. When you're up in the air, it's too late. No point in worrying about it then.

My mother never gave up one me. I messed up in school so much they were sending me home, but my mother sent me right back.

My ultimate life dream project is my kids. My family.

When I did A Soldier's Story, I was very young and green and thought I knew everything-now I know I know everything!

I work hard for the audience. It's entertainment. I don't need validation.

If I am a cup maker, I'm interested in making the best cup I possibly can. My effort goes into that cup, not what people think about it.

I'm not in the loop; I don't know any actors, really, just the ones I work with.

I still have my unemployment books and I remember when I worked for the sanitation department and the post office.

I've worked in a factory. I was a garbage man. I worked in a post office. It's not that long ago. I like to think that I'm just a regular guy.

Acting is just a way of making a living, the family is life.

I don't concern myself with award. I'd been to the party enough times to know it really didn't matter.

I played Othello, but I didn't sit around thinking how Laurence Olivier did it when he played it. That wouldn't do me any good.

Dakota Fanning is a child, but she is a wonderful actor. I don't know what a child actor is. She's an actor who's a child.

One good thing about acting in film is that it's good therapy.

I've been fortunate. I don't pick scripts. Scripts pick me.

My role 14 years ago in Richard III - that was the first time I played a bad guy and learned a lot about it - they have all the fun!

The last few years I've been saying I was ready to quit. It wasn't that interesting to me. Now that I'm directing, it's all new again.

Any good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation.

I'm not a film buff. I don't watch a lot of movies.

Meryl and Katharine Hepburn are probably the two greatest actresses of this and the last century.

Everybody has a job to do. There are people in Iraq on both sides of this war who do what they do for religious reasons, and they feel with God on their side. Some people are good at annihilating people. Maybe that's their gift.

When people protest and are upset with a movie, it becomes a big hit. They hated Passion of The Christ, it worked out pretty well for the box office. So let's get that going.

I had a lot of success from the start. I never really was tested for long periods of time. I got my first professional job while I was a senior in college. I signed with the William Morris Agency before I graduated.

Michelle Pfeiffer hasn't been finding a lot of work recently because she doesn't like what a woman her age is offered. That's a real double standard. You get Sean Connery, who gets older and older, still playing opposite young ladies, but it doesn't work the other way around.

I wasn't allowed to go to movies when I was kid; my father was a minister. 101 Dalmatians and King of Kings, that was the extent of it.

I think the bottom of the totem pole is African-American women, or women of colour. I think they get the least opportunities in Hollywood.

I and haven't been unemployed for 20 years. I'm an exception to the rule.

That's what I tell young actors. "You don't have to compromise. Go do some theater and wait for an appropriate role."

I'm not a big Hollywood star. I'm an actor. I'm called a star. That's not what I am. First of all I'm a human being; my profession is acting. People give you titles. They say you're an up and coming star, then they say you're a star, then they say you're a washed-up star. So I don't get caught up in what I'm called. My job, my profession, is acting.

Religion to me is when man gets ahold of spirituality: "My god is right, yours is wrong." Religion to me is the human condition. "If you're a Muslim, you can't be a Christian." That to me is religion.

I've always seen it to be a privilege to make movies. It's a really expensive, creative medium.

As an actor in the theater you're taught that you never play a bad guy. You have to love who you are. You can't say, "Oh, I'm a bad guy." How do you play that?

There's things that I can do as an actor that I couldn't do in any other form of life and I've got a strange personality. But film requires strange people, so I've got a nice comfy home.

Cats are too independent. They piss me off. They play when they want, and then they turn their back on you. Dogs, you throw the ball, and they bring it back, tongue hanging out, tail wagging. Cats are like "Not right now, too busy." Definitely a dog man. Except when it comes to cleaning up after them! Cats win that!

There are films that I don't like, and then someone will come up to me and say it's their favorite movie. The movies belong to the people. You make them and you put them out. For me, I love the process of making films. For me, my favorite film is always my next one.

I actually don't hang out with any celebrities. My closest friends are old friends. And my real close friends, none of them are actors.

I'm a logic monster, if things don't make sense I gotta make sense of them.

I always think it's not what we know that's terrifying; it's what we don't know. That's sort of pervasive with everything in life.

Acting, it's not my life, my children and my family, that's life. I'll get up every morning, God willing, for that.

A sociopath will do anything to win. Anything.

Acting is like music and you improvise. It's like jazz, there's no rhyme or reason to it. It's not a plan. You practice to music and you just play it.

I try not to think about that [getting Oscar] ahead of time. You just try to do the best work you can, and then you get the movie out there, and we've been hearing good things. But you never know, you don't want to get too high, and you don't want to get too low.

Americans love to talk about the Constitution and how it protects the rights of every citizen and promises freedom to every citizen, but it's also a country based on racism and they don't talk about that too much and every time there's a film which deals with it there's certain parts of the country that feel uncomfortable.

If you don't love your fellow man, women, person, then you don't have anything. If you don't treat your neighbor as you would want to be treated that to me is the fundamental message.

As an actor, you're a color of paint on someone else's palette. But as a director, it's your canvas and you make the painting you want to make.

Fundamentally, the most important thing is to get the film made for me and to get as many people to see it as possible. And if I help that, then - I know I help that, let's put it that way. I do know that I help that. It is called show business.

I don't feel pressure, because I do what I want to do. I don't feel pressure at all. I've never done any movies because I thought this was what somebody wanted me to do. I'm a bit more, for lack of a better word, selfish than that. But like I say in the movie, you do what you have to do so that you can do what you want to do.

I'm not interested in being a celebrity; I'm interested in being a better actor and a better director.

I honestly believe, and I've said it many times, that the universal stems from the specific and I can't walk around with a performance and ask everyone how they feel about it, but if noble is an opinion that people have I'll accept that. I've been asked many times why I don't play bad guys, or heavies, and I would do it, absolutely, in a second, just haven't been offered any so... if anybody has a script out there tonight I'm more than willing.

My mother used to tell me: "You gotta smile more. Because if you don't smile, the way you look at people, they'll think you're mad at them."

We've all had some level of injustice, whether 20 years in prison, or 20 minutes sitting in your car waiting for a police officer to determine your future. Or even a few moments in an elevator with some woman clutching her purse thinking you're going to rob her ¾ regardless of celebrity, that has happened to me.

I just do what I feel and what I like. I don't necessarily censor or feel an obligation to have a particular moral standard - I'm willing to wallow in the mud, if necessary. It appears as if there seems to be a consistency in result, but maybe that has as much to do with the roles I choose as it does with how I play them. I do what pleases me.

If you take the time and put in the effort to write your own material and absolutely refuse to be denied the right to make your film it is difficult whatever colour you are.

We'll all retire from life at some point. The great thing about acting is you don't necessarily have to retire.

When people say "What do you want people to get from this movie?" I say, "Well, it depends on what they bring to it." I don't try to decide what people should get from it or why. I don't do a part for those kinds of reasons.

I think we're fascinated by gangsters and that whole lifestyle and crossing the line. We get sort of stuck in our normal lives, if you will, and you want to be bigger than life and I think people somehow live through these sorts of characters.

Denzel Washington: I like the collaboration, I like seeing people do well, so I really plan to direct the rest of my days.

I always say the time to worry about flying is when you're on the ground. If you don't trust the captain, don't go.

I don't look back, no. Maybe when I'm older; people say, 'What's your favorite film?' I say, 'My next one.' I'm not interested in sitting around; I just don't, never have.

When you trust the director you want to trust his or her choices. I don't want to say, 'No, I don't like this girl or that guy," when the director really loves them. No, you want to go with what the director likes.

Sometimes when you're the good guy, you're sort of trapped. "Oh, he can't say that." And even when you're playing a real person like a Steven Biko, you're sort of stuck within those confines. So yeah, bad guys do have more fun.

Taking the money from drug operations and all that sort of stuff is something that goes past what most of us in society would expect a policeman should do. That temptation hits the police force at the same time as the temptation to take those drugs that are readily available hits the people on the streets.

When you make a movie it's always interesting, because you end up in places you never would as a normal visitor or tourist.

I'm not afraid to upset people. But I am not as upset because I understand what I'm up against.

I think that if there can be considered racism it's to do with the lack of opportunities for writers and producers and the people behind the camera.

I love research and being educated. It's a great job being able to step into all kinds of professions and into other people's shoes.

Years ago, even prior to 9/11, I did a movie called "The Siege." I did a lot of research with the FBI and the CIA. And I was amazed at that time (I guess we might all know it now) how little information they shared with each other. So after that, I'm not surprised by anything.

I'm selfish, I think. I think an artist has to be. I'm not worried about what people think. I play the parts that I find interesting. It'd bother me more to be just pigeonholed into doing what people think is ethical or that's boring to me. I don't pick parts with that in mind, I just find interesting stories. If it's interesting to me, then I do it.

When you don't understand something, you label it and condemn it" (94) - Danny Glover, "The Fundamental Things

The strongest, toughest men all have compassion. They're not heartless and cold. You have to be man enough to have compassion - to care about people and about your children" (217) - John Singleton "Oh Man, I've Become My Father

Bad guys need love too.

Every day, sincerely and without phoniness, Lou demonstrated by his actions how very vital it is - more than anything else - to understand and appreciate the people who work with you...Do your job well, but always remember that the people you work with are your most valuable asset. Embrace them. Honor them. Respect them" (206) - "Prescriptions for Success" by John Schuerholz

Don't get all sentimental on me, Makes me think I'm gonna die.

I just try to be honest and true to the character and play the part.

At the end of the day, it's not about what you have or even what you've accomplished. It's about what you've done with those accomplishments. Its about who you've lifted up, who you've made better. It about what you've given back" (23).

There's racism everywhere.

We do what we have to so we can do what we want to.

It is very important to transcend the places that hold us.

In Los Angeles, everyone is a star.

One failed experiment is one step closer to Success

In my humble opinion, in the nuclear world, the true enemy is war itself.