Quote

I played guitar. I've always considered myself an actor, but I wasn't making a living as an actor. So I was in a couple of folk groups that managed to keep me in underwear and burritos.

Alan Arkin

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Alan Arkin
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: March 26
Actor
Character Actor
Film Actor
Film Director
Film Producer
Musician
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Singer
New York City
New York
Alan Wolf Arkin
Making
Folks
Living
Played
Keep
Guitar
Always
Couple
Burritos
Actor
Underwear
Groups
Folk
Wasn
Managed
Actors
Considered

More quotes by Alan Arkin

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Marriage requires searing honesty at all costs. I learned that from my third wife.
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[The business is] more corporate and more formulaic and less experiential.
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My favorite kind of film is serious comedy. Comedy with serious underpinning.
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All I can say is if the part doesn't delight me in some way, or I can't feel any compassion for it, I just can't do it.
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Improvisation sometimes seemed more like jazz than acting, like verbal jazz, with the actors playing a theme back and forth, and then introducing another theme, incorporating it, somehow trying to work their way all together to a meaning of some kind, or at least a conclusion.
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You know what Andy Warhol's sole contribution to this country has been? He made Campbell's Soup a household word.
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If I'm doing a fake movie, it's gonna be a fake hit.
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I gotta keep busy. I'm not happy unless I'm working on two, three things.
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No matter how much time you spend reading books or following your intuition, you're gonna screw it up. Fifty times. You can't do parenting right.
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Things are never going to turn out how you think they will.
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I'm an actor. My life as an actor depends on who sends me what. I'm just taking the best stuff that I can find that's sent my way, regardless of how big or little the paycheck is. I don't want to work for scale anymore. I'm at a point now where, no matter how good something is, I'm not going to kill myself and end up in the hole.
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There's a familiarity that sometimes shocks and annoys the hell out of me. People want a relationship with you that they haven't earned.
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I don't think it does the audience any good to know what I do to prepare. It keeps it more of a surprise. I don't feel like it has to be a mystery.
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I don't believe in competitions between artists. This is insane. Who has the authority to say someone is better?
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I don't love the business. I never wanted to be a part of it. I don't think any actor does. Most of the time, I've been really fortunate to work with people who are really fun to work with. It doesn't mean we don't take it seriously, but no one is under the delusion (that we're) bringing world peace.
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Is it possible to have an endless series of successes without falling on our faces? I suppose it is, but I think it would entail doing the same things over and over again without taking chances, without taking risks or exploring our limits, without finding out what we can and can't do.
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But one of the things I learned from improvising is that all of life is an improvisation, whether you like it or not. Some of the greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th century came out of people dropping things.
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It's murder to doubt yourself in life. It took until I was 45 to get to that point. As hard as it is in your work, it's harder in your life. But it can be done.
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I read somewhere that some people believe that the entire universe is a matrix of living thought. And I said, Man, if that's not a definition of God, I don't know what is.
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Either you're growing or you're decaying there's no middle ground. If you're standing still, you're decaying.
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