Marlon Brando Quotations

I have eyes like those of a dead pig.

The only thing an actor owes his public is not to bore them.

If there's anything unsettling to the stomach, it's watching actors on television talk about their personal lives.

To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty, to interpret it is his problem, and to express it his dedication.

Privacy is not something that I'm merely entitled to, it's an absolute prerequisite.

An actor is at most a poet and at least an entertainer.

Never confuse the size of your paycheck with the size of your talent.

If we are not our brother's keeper, at least let us not be his executioner.

If you want something from an audience, you give blood to their fantasies. It's the ultimate hustle.

An actor's a guy who, if you ain't talking about him, ain't listening.

The only reason I'm in Hollywood is that I don't have the moral courage to refuse the money.

There's a line in the picture where he snarls, 'Nobody tells me what to do.' That's exactly how I've felt all my life.

With women, I've got a long bamboo pole with a leather loop on the end. I slip the loop around their necks so they can't get away or come too close. Like catching snakes.

I don't mind that I'm fat. You still get the same money.

Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life. Quitting acting, that's the sign of maturity.

I don't think it's the nature of any man to be monogamous. Men are propelled by genetically ordained impulses over which they have no control to distribute their seed.

I went home and did some rehearsing to satisfy my curiosity about whether I could play an Italian. I put on some makeup, stuffed Kleenex in my cheeks, and worked out the characterization first in front of a mirror, then on a television monitor. After working on it, I decided I could create a characterization that would support the story. The people at Paramount saw the footage and liked it, and that's how I became the Godfather.

Kowalski was always right, and never afraid. He never wondered, he never doubted. His ego was very secure. And he had the kind of brutal agressiveness that I hate. I'm afraid of it. I detest the character. (his feelings about one of his most famous characters, Stanley Kowalski from 'A Streetcar Named Desire')

My mind is always soothed when I imagine myself sitting on my South Sea island at night,

At Paramount, I sat at lunch with John Wayne. I couldn't even talk.

People ask that a lot. They say, 'What did you do while you took time out ?' - as if the rest of my life is taking time out. But the fact is, making movies is time out for me because the rest, the nearly complete whole, is what's real for me. I'm not an actor and haven't been for years. I'm a human being - hopefully a concerned and somewhat intelligent one - who occasionally acts.

Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life. The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis.

I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse.

He's the kind of guy that when he dies, he's going up to heaven and give God a bad time for making him bald.

I'd gotten to know quite a few mafiosi, and all of them told me they loved the picture because I had played the Godfather with dignity. Even today I can't pay a check in Little Italy.

Elvis Presley had nothing to do with excellence, just myth.

Even today I meet people who think of me automatically as a tough, insensitive, coarse guy named Stanley Kowalski. They can't help it, but, it is troubling.

Bertolucci is extraordinary in his ability to perceive, he's a poet...he is very easy to work for.

The power and influence of a movie star is curious: I didn't ask for it or take it; people gave it to me. Simply because you're a movie star, people empower you with special rights and privileges.

If you're successful, acting is about as soft a job as anybody could ever wish for. But if you're unsuccessful it's worse than having a skin disease.

Hollywood is run by Jews, it is owned by Jews...

The Jews control Hollywood and use it to promote their own agenda.

Acting serves as the quintessential social lubricant and a device for protecting our interests and gaining advantage in every aspect of life.

The close-up says everything, it's then that an actor's learned, rehearsed behavior becomes most obvious to an audience and chips away, unconsciously, at its experience of reality. In a close-up, the audience is only inches away, and your face becomes the stage.

I only mean forty per cent of what I say.

I don't think I was constructed to be monogamous. I don't think it's the nature of any man to be monogamous. Men are propelled by genetically ordained impulses over which they have no control to distribute their seed into as many females as possible.

I thank you for not snoring.

If the expenditure of money for entertainment in America is any indication of taste, clearly the majority of us are addicted to trash.

George Bernard Shaw said that thinking was the greatest of all human endeavors, but I would say that feeling was. Allowing yourself to feel things, to feel love or wrath, hatred, rage.

Mafia is the best example of capitalism we have.

The military mind has one aim, and that is to make soldiers react as mechanically as possible. They want the same predictability in a man as they do in a telephone or a machine gun, and they train their soldiers to act as a unit, not as individuals.

Acting is the least mysterious of all crafts. Whenever we want something from somebody or when we want to hide something or pretend, we're acting. Most people do it all day long.

Food has always been my friend. When I wanted to feel better or had a crisis in my life, I opened the icebox.

It's the hardest thing in the world to accept a 'little' success and leave it that way.

People around me never say anything. They just seem to want to hear what I have to say. That's why I do all the talking.

Working with any actor is like working with a monkey.

The most repulsive thing you could ever imagine is the inside of a camel's mouth. That and watching a girl eat octopus or squid.

We make up any excuse to preserve myths about people we love, but the reverse is also true; if we dislike an individual we adamantly resist changing our opinion, even when somebody offers proof of his decency, because it's vital to have myths about both the gods and devils in our lives.

The close-up says everything.

It is a simple fact that all of us use the techniques of acting to achieve whatever ends we seek.

I don't know what people expect when they meet me. They seem to be afraid that I'm going to piss in the potted palm and slap them on the ass.

I don't stretch my hand out anymore, but I never get tired of waiting for the next magic.

You've seen every single race besmirched, but you never saw an unfavorable image of a kike because the Jews are ever watchful for that. They never allowed it to be shown on the screen!

If there are two hundred people in a room and one of them doesn't like me, I've got to get out.

Sometimes you just get the feeling that here it is 11o'clock in the morning and you're not in school.

(...the non-conformist, how do you keep from getting scarred?)/i don’t! i got a scar here…and uh i got a scar on my knee…and uh a few scars on my soul.

Most of the successful people in Hollywood are failures as human beings.

What might be a brave choice for you, for another person they may simply not experience fear.

I believe I did what honor dictated and that belief sustains me, except for a slight desire to be dead which I'm sure will pass.

Most writers write haphazardly. The actor is fighting unjustified words all the time.

I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse.

Acting is an empty and usless profession.

It's a long climb up Fools' Hill.

It really don't matter what you're thinking about, as long as you're thinking about something.

Nobody "becomes" a character. You can't act unless you are who you are.

Ask most kids about details about Auschwitz or about how the American Indians were assassinated as a people and they don't know anything about it. They don't want to know anything. Most people just want their beer or their soap opera or their lullaby.

We don't go anywhere. Going somewhere is for squares. We just go!

I think awards in this country at this time are inappropriate to be received or given until the condition of the American Indian is drastically altered. If we are not our brother's keeper, at least let us not be his executioner.

The four pillars of wisdom that support journalistic endeavors are: lies, stupidity, money-grubbing, and ethical irresponsibility.

Would people applaud me if I was a good plumber?

‎We only have so many faces in our pockets

The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis.

I have decided to tell the story of my life as best I can, so that my children can separate the truth from the myths that others have created about me, as myths are created about everyone swept up in the turbulent and distorting maelstrom of celebrity in our culture.

I put on an act sometimes, and people think I’m insensitive. Really, it’s like a kind of armor because I’m too sensitive. If there are two hundred people in a room and one of them doesn’t like me, I’ve got to get out.

Do you remember when Marilyn Monroe died? Everybody stopped work, and you could see all that day the same expressions on their faces, the same thought: ‘How can a girl with success, fame, youth, money, beauty . . . how could she kill herself?’ Nobody could understand it because those are the things that everybody wants, and they can’t believe that life wasn’t important to Marilyn Monroe, or that her life was elsewhere

I refused to be a fool dancing on a string held by all of those big shots. I don't apologise, that's my life

I had to read Wuthering Heights for English and I never enjoyed a book in all my life as much as that one.

In a close-up, the audience is only inches away, and your face becomes the stage.

A sensitive person receives fifty impressions where somebody else may only get seven. Sensitive people are so vulnerable; they're so easily brutalized and hurt just because they are sensitive. The more sensitive you are, the more certain you are to be brutalized, develop scabs.Analysis helps. It helped me. But still, the last eight, nine years I've been pretty messed up, a mess pretty much.

Too much success can ruin you as surely as too much failure.

The more sensitive you are, the more certain you are to be brutalized, develop scabs, never evolve. Never allow yourself to feel anything, because you always feel to much.

I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream. That's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor and surviving.

I think Robert F. Kennedy really, finally, cared; he realized that all of the rhetoric had to be put down into some form of action. That's perhaps the reason they killed him. They don't care what you say, you can say as much as you want to, provided you don't do anything. If you start to do something and your shuffling raises too much dust, they will disestablish you. That's what happened to Martin Luther King.

Hey, you wanna hear my philosophy of life? Do it to him before he does it to you.

Horror... and moral terror... are your friends.

I suppose the story of my life is a search for love, but more than that, I have been looking for a way to repair myself from the damages I suffered early on and to define my obligation, if I had any, to myself and my species.

Like a large number of men, I, too, have had homosexual experiences and I am not ashamed. But if there is someone who is convinced that Jack Nicholson and I are lovers, may they continue to do so. I find it amusing.

An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so he must be willing to accept all experiences that life can offer.

Every time you get knocked down you get up stronger.

Do you spend time with your family? Good. Because a man that doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man.

People will like you who never met you, they think you're absolutely wonderful; and then people also will hate you, for reasons that have nothing to do with any real experience with you. People don't want to lose their enemies. We have favorite enemies, people we love to hate and we hate to love. If they do something good, we don't like it. I found myself doing that with Ronald Reagan. He is anathema to me. If he does something that's reasonable, I find my mind trying to find some way to interpret it so that it's not reasonable, so that somewhere it's jingoist extremism.

All I want to be is normally insane.

Regret is useless in life. It's in the past. All we have is now.

Never surrender to the momentum of mediocrity.

Acting, in general, is something most people think they're incapable of, but they do it from morning to night. The subtlest acting I've ever seen is by ordinary people trying to show they feel something they don't, or trying to hide something. It's something everyone learns at an early age.

Only the one who walks his own way can't be overtaken.

I value each woman for what she has to offer whether it be charm-beauty-wit-intelligence or humor but warmth is the quality I value most.

When I lie on the beach there naked, which I do sometimes, and I feel the wind coming over me and I see the stars up above and I am looking into this very deep, indescribable night, it is something that escapes my vocabulary to describe. Then I think: 'God, I have no importance. Whatever I do or don't do, or what anybody does, is not more important than the grains of sand that I am lying on, or the coconut that I am using for my pillow.' So I really don't think in the long sense.

An actor's a guy who, if you ain't talking about him, he ain't listening.