Mike Nichols Quotes

40 quotes in 559 categories

• In making movies, time is so short-because it is so expensive-that we tend to neglect the place from which the best ideas come, namely that…
• Nerves provide me with energy... It's when I don't have them, when I feel at ease, that's when I get worried.
• Take off all your clothes and walk down the street waving a machete and firing an Uzi, and terrified citizens will phone the police and…
• Yes. The whole point about laughter is it’s like mercury: you can’t catch it, you can’t catch what motivates it—that’s why it’s funny,
• All the theories that acting is reacting to imaginary circumstances as though they are real, and directing is turning psychology into behavior, those are all…
• Any good movie is filled with secrets.
• 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 like…
• The only safe thing is to take a chance. Play safe and you are dead. Taking risks is the essence of good work, and the…
• The unconscious is our best collaborator.
• Directing is mystifying. It's a long, long, skid on an icy road, and you do the best you can trying to stay on the road...…
• There’s nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you’re meant to do. It’s like falling in love.
• The only safe thing in filmmaking is to take a chance.
• There's nothing in the American dream about character. It's a serious flaw.
• I came to love silence, because it's so rare, and it's now my favorite aural condition.
• It's not a filmmaker's job to explain his technique but to tell his story the best way he can.
• A movie is like a person. Either you trust it or you don't.
• If you want to be a legend, God help you, it's so easy. You just do one thing. You can be the master of suspense,…
• I love to take actors to a place where they open a vein. That’s the job. The key is that I make it safe for…
• I have never understood people dividing things into dramas and comedies,
• That seems to me the greatest American danger we're all in, that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it.

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