Whether something is a success or not has never had much to do with what you do next. — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
You want to make money, remake 'Cinderella.' You want to move people, remake the Hippolytus and Phaedra myth. — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
The thing is, as a film director, you're essentially alone: You have to tell a story primarily through pictures, and only you… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
If you lose a parent, it never goes away. As a kid, I dreamed about my father coming back for 15 or… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
If you're fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939 and you're a Jew, you don't think so much about relationships. People didn't have a… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
You could say that it's in talking movies that inner life begins to appear. You can see things happen to the faces… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
The reason you do this stuff - comedy, plays, movies - is to be seized by something, to disappear in the service… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
Improvisation has to do with exploring something like two brothers in a room together. You find out things about situations by discovering… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
It's very weird about movies: you never know which ones are going to stay alive and which one are going to be… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
It's very, very corrupting to the spirit, doing comedy. And you have to be almost a saint, like Jack Benny was, like… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
Things come in waves, and I'm always more interested in places like, for instance, Chicago, where people don't follow fashion. They're not… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
A great thing is happening on cable TV. You see characters change in stories over years, like in Tolstoy. That's a whole,… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
You can always tell gifted and highly intelligent people as they always turn to the past. Any young person who knows anything… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
I've learned that many of the worst things lead to the best things, that no great thing is achieved without a couple… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
The degree to which you're peculiar and different is the degree to which you must learn to hear people thinking. Just in… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
I never understand when people say, 'Do you do comedy or tragedy?' I don't think they're very much different. They both have… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
I am drawn to the mystery of marriage. You can never know what the contract is between two people, and that is… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
Plays, especially great plays, yield their secrets over a long period of time. You can't read it three times and say, 'OK,… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
Chicago is not a very fashion-driven place. Nobody says, 'Oh, you've got to come see these fabulous people!' Nobody cares. — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
I still think that luck is what a lot of the good things come from. It's simply the luck of where you… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
I keep coming back to it, over and over - adultery and cheating. It's the most interesting problem in the theater. How… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
The thing about being an outsider... is that it teaches you to hear what people are thinking because you're constantly looking for… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
The things that you saw earlier in your life generally have more power than the things you saw last week. — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
A play, after all, is a mystery. There's no narration. And as soon as there's no narration, it's open to interpretation. It… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
All movies are pure process. A commercial movie isn't less process than an art movie. You can't make your decisions about a… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
Never let people see what you want, because they will not let you have it. Never let anybody see what you feel,… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
When we talk about reviews, what we are really talking about is just a market report - it's like reading about the… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
I think a director can make a play happen before your eyes so that you are part of it and it is… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
Stand-up comedy is a very hard thing on the spirit. There are people who transcend it, like Jack Benny and Steve Martin, but in… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
It's the hardest thing on earth to like yourself, and then when you do, it's a catastrophe. I mean, the people I know who… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
I used to say that winning the Oscar means being back at the Beverly Hills Hotel at 1 A.M. feeling empty. It's the industry… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
I'm an enormous fan of 'The West Wing.' It was one of the very few shows I would watch every week. — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
I don't expect anything from reviews. Sometimes I am bemused by them. — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
My first memory in the world is my gym teacher ripping my mother's necklace off her neck and throwing it out the window and… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
Whether something is a success or not has never had much to do with what you do next. — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
The reason that most British actors are better than most American actors in the end is that they don't make any money. At the… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
If you lose a parent, it never goes away. As a kid, I dreamed about my father coming back for 15 or 20 years.… — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
Nerves provide me with energy... It's when I don't have them, when I feel at ease, that I get worried. — Mike Nichols Copy Share Image
