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'Catch-22' was a huge failure, and it rubbed off on everybody connected to it. I had a bunch of lean years where I had to do things, a lot of which I wasn't wildly enthusiastic about.

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
Wasn
Wildly
Everybody
Lean
Years
Enthusiastic
Things
Catch
Bunch
Connected
Failure
Huge
Rubbed

More quotes by Alan Arkin

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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.
Alan Arkin
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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.
Alan Arkin
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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.
Alan Arkin
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[The business is] more corporate and more formulaic and less experiential.
Alan Arkin
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My favorite kind of film is serious comedy. Comedy with serious underpinning.
Alan Arkin
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You can begin to see an amalgamation of cultures, the real beginning of one world. Ten years ago, it would have been impossible to imagine a Cockney singing group with a Southern Negro style and Indian and electronic music. I wonder if people have even noticed what a tremendous cultural signal the Beatles are.
Alan Arkin
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Two-thirds of American movies are extensions of commercials -- they tell you how to feel and they tell you how to think -- rather than letting you figure it out on your own.
Alan Arkin
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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.
Alan Arkin
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I used to watch the world as if it was a performance and I would realize that certain things that people did moved me, and certain things didn't move me, and I tried to analyze, even at that age, six and seven and eight, why I was moved by certain things they did
Alan Arkin
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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.
Alan Arkin
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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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Marriage requires searing honesty at all costs. I learned that from my third wife.
Alan Arkin
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What I've learned about teaching is to refer back to the root of that word, which is educo, which means to pull from. Education does not mean jamming information into somebody's head. Rather, it's that ancient idea that all knowledge is within us to teach is to help somebody pull it out of themselves.
Alan Arkin
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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.
Alan Arkin
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TV has taken reflection out of the human condition. People didn't use to have a ready answer for everything, whether they knew something about it or not. People think they have to have an answer for everything because the guys on TV have an answer for everything. But it's bullsh**t! Reflection is crucial.
Alan Arkin
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If I'm doing a fake movie, it's gonna be a fake hit.
Alan Arkin
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I gotta keep busy. I'm not happy unless I'm working on two, three things.
Alan Arkin
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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.
Alan Arkin
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I don't live in L.A. on purpose because I don't wanna be immersed in that. I have to have a real life, with real people, in order to inform what I'm doing otherwise, it just becomes the snake eating its own tail. Vampirism.
Alan Arkin
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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.
Alan Arkin