Nick Nolte Quotations

The only people who ever called me a rebel were people who wanted me to do what they wanted.

You have to struggle a bit, hustle a little, and be willing to go bankrupt. Once you're willing to do that, everything opens up and you get the freedom. My joke is that next year, I'll make the first film that costs zero dollars.

Success comes to you with luck and a lot of hard work, but it doesn't give you the right to be any better than anybody else.

You give up your narcissism, your egotism. That's how you achieve chemistry.

No one wants to spend too long inside their own darkness.

I have a lot of scars, man. My mother said that a man is not a man unless he has a scar on his face. And what she meant by a scar was some kind of battle that you had to go through, whether it was psychological or physical. To her, a scar was actually beautiful and not something that marred you.

I am a good sewer. My mother taught me how to sew.

Hollywood is all made up, anyway. Especially the stories and angles that people want to pin on you.

About the only thing that'll stay with you that you can trust all your life is your breath. Your breath will be there at the very last, because when it stops, you will stop.

The way you conquer fear is to feel it all the way, and then you'll find out that there's nothing there - it's just emotion.

I have a high degree of sensitivity, always have. I was very shy as a child. I don't know why that was.

Everyone chases a bit of what they say life is about: money, desire... But when you stop chasing, you realise life is a rhythm and it's very peaceful, very quiet. You see, it's quite a miracle.

I've made a lot of mistakes and I don't regret any of them. Sometimes that's the only way you learn.

Birth is violent, and out of that violence is our only chance of rebirth.

Now, there is always a tremendous fear of science and progressing forward into areas of the unknown and it is a valid fear. Some of the genetic alterations of food are a little edgy.

World War II affected the male population in a very detrimental way. They were happy to be home, happy to be alive, happy they won, but they could not express to anybody the horror they had been through.

Asking for forgiveness is just one of the most painful kind of experiences.

In the sixties, you're still thinking you could do something about this slow disintegration of the body.

Action films have a certain illogicalness to them. They're what we call, when we're working, 'exaggerated realism.'

I accept the dying process. I would just like to be as healthy as I possibly can at each step and phase along the way.

I never caught on to being a bully.

If I'm not a successful human being, who I am?

If you get yourself in a hole, you dig yourself out.

It's failure, really, that you grow by, although nobody likes to experience it.

We're very reluctant to change, even though we know that all things change, and especially our relationships are just determined to change.

With 3D, all you're doing is trying to shock the audience; there's no value to the storytelling.

If you're older you want to tell stories about the pool of human life and living and to communicate, not only to your age group but to do an age group that can begin to understand, that has enough experience of life far beyond the taste of life.

We truly have an ancient part of the brain that was about survival when we were prey but we seem to have gone past prey. We eat everything and nothing eats us.

We're really all alone. We can't ever get inside another person's spirit, and see the world they do. So we are alone in that sense. The only way we have to communicate feelings is through words.

I never felt comfortable in real life very well. It's always been an awkward kind of thing for me.

If you had a cancer on your skin and had it burned it off, you'd wash it and clean it every day.

Acting is a bit of a substitute for life.

After Civil Rights, it was very awkward for whites and blacks. We didn't know how to talk to each other.

Ageing's a difficult thing, moving closer to death, but it's okay. I've had a good time living, so I'm gonna have a good time dying.

All American males are failed athletes, and it was big time even if it was Little League. It meant a lot to you.

Early on I decided that I was going to lie to the press. The best approach to talking about my personal life was to lie.

Electing a black president was probably the only coup America could pull off.

How do I relax? Meditate, I guess. I quit golf. You twist your back and get all cranked up.

I like working with writer-directors because you can solve problems right there.

I never fought much. It just wasn't my thing. I suppose I could, but I've never got into fights. Not a real one.

I'd like to do one European film a year.

I've never been all that comfortable in real life.

If I'm going to have to deal, as I get older, with arthritic pain, I don't want to get into opiates.

If you feel you have a film that's valid, you stick your ass on the line.

It's easier to go somewhere if you've been there before.

It's fun to change your body and find new things that your body does because of the weight.

Living in a small town, one of the keys to survival was your imagination.

No one consciously wants to destroy themselves. It always comes in a disguise. But then you have to deal with it some way.

Nobody likes to lose power or reach a point of humility.

Obviously I had gone all through high school and into college, and you don't do that not knowing how to read.

You work at a job, and you reach a certain level, and you're a little satisfied, and you keep going at it a little more, and you finally finish it. You go, 'Ah,' all your dopamine receptor sites are full. You're satiated.

Sometimes the writing can be so good that the actor doesn't really have to do anything.

The difference between a murderer and myself is only that I choose not to do it. But I'm capable.

The greatest movie would be the movie that gave the audience a cathartic feeling of transcendence.

The thing about '48 Hrs.' that really isn't thought about much is that's the first film where the black and the white criticize each other.

The truth was that, you know, there was no reason to send me to Shattuck Military School. But it was a disciplinarian school.

We're social animals. We've got to get along together. It's in our nature. We're hardwired that way.

When I was a kid, my dad went to World War II. I didn't know him. I was born in '41.

When women talk about their feelings, they're not asking for solutions.

When you are making the one you are doing, you think it is the greatest film going. And then you do another one and it is a great film.

You do come to a point where you can get your life in control a bit.

You don't want to make awards the reason you're doing things.

Actors are really working with bodies, with their minds, and with their emotions. Feelings, basically. That's what movies are about, going from one feeling to another.

Americans aren't good at accents, but the English are because their accents change. You go five or six blocks and the accent is different, so they are used to hearing different pitches. In America, you gotta travel maybe 10 states before you can really hear a difference.

I can't get any satiation. My brain is wired in such a way that I - in my research, I probably have a lack of D1 and D2 receptor sites. These are dopamine receptor sites, and satiation is a process that involves a cascade.

I've been in movies where the movie doesn't come together but the role comes together, or the movie comes together but the role doesn't come together or something like that. Something misses. It's very difficult to make it hit on all cylinders - it's just very rare.

In 'Over the Hedge,' I played a bear, and I spent all this time listening to the sounds they make when they fight and mate, when they're angry or happy.

Women are just more oriented toward feelings - and I don't mean that in a negative way. But with a male actor and a male director, the emotional exploration can only go so far. With a female director, you can end up exploring so many more depths.

You don't learn anything from success. You know, it's comfortable, it's nice, it's warm, but success just leaves you kind of feeling a little bloated.

You're playing a role, but you're still feeling it. You can walk away from it after 'Cut,' but if you're playing a sad or mixed-up person, it's hard to stay in that place for these longish period of times. You kind of have to check out.

If it's ball four, all you have to do is say 'ball four,' ... You don't have to say 'take your base.'

He had one scene, one scene, and I think he had one line. And he was a director, and I was the actor auditioning. It was a spoof on what happens in Hollywood.

You can't help but learn something from this experience,

There's a little bit of awe you have in Terry, and so it makes you deeply committed to him and the process, ... C.

I had to get some real ballplayers and real umpires to give instructions,

because there are a lot of characters that aren't followed through.

I never liked the Oscars. They didn't do too much for me at all. I felt like a big, vulnerable hunk of baloney being used to sell some products.

Everything has a purpose, even this, and it's up to you to find it.

You do come to a point where you can get your life in control a bit. But going through life, you discover these deep, dark things in yourself that you cant run away from, so you have to learn to embrace them. I mean, the difference between a murderer and myself is only that I choose not to do it. But Im totally capable.

Class isn't something you buy. Look at you ... you've got on a $500 suit and you're still a low life.

This is a service station, we offer service. There is no higher purpose.

People are not theirs thoughts, they think they are, and it brings them all kinds of sadness.

Nobody likes to change. There will always be resistance to change, and there always will be change. And the quicker you get to that, the easier it is. It's not such a difficult thing. If you entrench yourself and go, "By God, I will not change. I will not have this." Then, you're a dead man. We're great at adaptability. It's our strongest suit.

There's no greater purpose than service to others.

The corn that is B something 5 corn thats been genetically altered in the United States, it cant reproduce but it has huge kernels, its very sweet and its wonderful but the winds have blown this across into Mexico. And so the Mexican corn is being infected with the inability to reproduce.

First make peace inside yourself.

Death isn't sad. The sad thing is: most people don't live at all.

A warrior is not about perfection or victory or invulnerability. He's about absolute vulnerability.

Every generation will be challenged morally once in their life about its government, and they will have to say where they stand.

When you start thinking about death more than sex, you know you're getting old.

Success is a very scary thing especially after you choose something and everything starts coming at you. It's absolutely frightening because the mind does things. It says, 'You've got to hold on to this or get away from this.

To allow the fear to come on you and then pass through. If you keep cutting the fear off by intervening - let's say, taking a Xanax to try to cure it - you'll never understand what fear is really for. Fear is part of a survival mechanism. The way you conquer fear is to feel it all the way, and then you'll find out that there's nothing there - it's just emotion.