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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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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
Way
Delight
Compassion
Doesn
Part
Feel
Feels
More quotes by Alan Arkin
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.
Alan Arkin
I had a hard time treating my field as if it’s horse racing, putting actors in competition against each other. I see how the industry and the studios feel it’s important, but I don’t really have a feeling for being in competition. I want to feel sympathetic and close to others, not opposed to them.
Alan Arkin
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.
Alan Arkin
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
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
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
You know what Andy Warhol's sole contribution to this country has been? He made Campbell's Soup a household word.
Alan Arkin
Every physicist knows that things connect with each other. To isolate things is not the way the universe works - winning best actor is arbitrary.
Alan Arkin
Truth is always unfolding. It's not an absolute.
Alan Arkin
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
I don't believe there's anything in life you can't go back and fix. The ancient Vedas - the oldest Hindu philosophy - and modern science agree that time is an illusion. If that's true, there's no such thing as a past or a future - it's all one huge now. So what you fix now affects the past and the future.
Alan Arkin
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
Either you're growing or you're decaying there's no middle ground. If you're standing still, you're decaying.
Alan Arkin
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
Marriage requires searing honesty at all costs. I learned that from my third wife.
Alan Arkin
For many years my acting came from a place of surmounting some enormous obstacle, confronting some stern and faceless judge who would condemn me to a pit of hell if I didn't achieve the zone, if even for a moment. Not a particularly happy place to work from.
Alan Arkin
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.
Alan Arkin
I know that if I can't move people, then I have no business being an actor.
Alan Arkin
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
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
