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I am just a middle-class farm boy from Dodge City and my grandparents were wheat farmers. I thought painting, acting, directing and photography were all part of being an artist. I have made my money that way. And I have had some fun. It's not been a bad life.

Dennis Hopper

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Dennis Hopper
Age: 74 †
Born: 1936
Born: May 17
Died: 2010
Died: May 29
Actor
Art Collector
Artist
Character Actor
Film Actor
Film Director
Filmmaker
Painter
Photographer
Printmaker
Screenwriter
Sculptor
Dodge City
Kansas
Dennis Lee Hopper
Thought
Boys
Grandparent
Part
Cities
Farm
Fun
Directing
Made
Middle
Farms
Way
Class
Farmers
Life
Acting
Photography
Dodge
Artist
City
Grandparents
Money
Painting
Wheat

More quotes by Dennis Hopper

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Art is a bad word in Hollywood. You use art too many times and they show you the elevator and then your name is taken off the parking lot.
Dennis Hopper
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I was a Shakespearean actor, I had preconceived ideas, line readings - everything was a gesture, everything was conscious.
Dennis Hopper
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When I was about 14. I saw my first mountain. I saw the ocean for the first time. I remember thinking that that ocean looked very similar to our wheat fields. I didn't know what I thought I would see when I looked out at the ocean, but I thought I'd see something different.
Dennis Hopper
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I made a picture called Super Mario Bros., and my six-year-old son at the time - he's now 18 - he said, 'Dad I think you're probably a pretty good actor, but why did you play that terrible guy King Koopa in Super Mario Bros?' And I said, 'Well Henry, I did that so you could have shoes,' and he said, 'Dad, I don't need shoes that badly.'
Dennis Hopper
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I was an abstract expressionist before I had seen any abstract expressionist paintings. I started when I was a kid and continued just doing abstract stuff all through high school.
Dennis Hopper
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You want to hear about insanity? I was found running naked through the jungles in Mexico. At the Mexico City airport, I decided I was in the middle of a movie and walked out on the wing on takeoff. My body... my liver... okay, my brain... went.
Dennis Hopper
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Work is fun to me. All those years of being an actor and a director and not being able to get a job - two weeks is too long to not know what my next job will be.
Dennis Hopper
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Just because it happened to you, doesn't mean it's interesting.
Dennis Hopper
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The inside of the Pentagon is an incredible place and a dramatic set. We do [travel] outside, but the inside workings of the civilian oversight of the military inside the Pentagon is really about as exciting as anything you ever want to deal with. It is really amazing.
Dennis Hopper
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Photography and painting, all of that fed into my directing eventually.
Dennis Hopper
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I've always been doing some sort of art. I started off, when I was very young, painting.
Dennis Hopper
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I was very shy, and it was a lot easier for me to communicate if I had a camera between me and other people.
Dennis Hopper
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I should have been dead ten times over. I've thought about that a lot. I believe in miracles. It's an absolute miracle that I'm still around.
Dennis Hopper
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I've been a Republican since Reagan. I voted for Bush and his father. I don't tell a lot of people, because I live in a city where somebody who voted for Bush is really an outcast.
Dennis Hopper
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The best and only authentic book written on the sixties underground.
Dennis Hopper
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I was reading a lot of Thomas Jefferson at the time, and Jefferson said that every 20 years, if one party has stayed in power, it's your obligation as an American to vote the other party in.
Dennis Hopper
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My whole written history is one big lie! I mean, I can't even believe my history.
Dennis Hopper
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Banks wont even loan each other money, everybody's going broke, and here we are inside here, these people are going to be out on the street selling apples and pencils and they're still going to be buying paintings for this money, so I don't know what's going on in this world.
Dennis Hopper
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The man is clear in his mind, but his soul is mad.
Dennis Hopper
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[After Easy Rider] I couldn't get another movie, so I lived in Mexico City for a couple of years. I lived in Paris for a couple of years. I didn't take any photographs, and then I went to Japan and saw a Nikon used. I bought it, and I just started, like an alcoholic. I shot 300 rolls of film. That was the beginning of me starting again.
Dennis Hopper