Best 92 quotes of John Malkovich on MyQuotes

Actors generally get to do things you probably shouldn't do in real life - well, at least as much as one might like to or be tempted to. Though I suppose a lot of actors just go ahead and do it, don't they?

A dog that has rabies probably will do things it wouldn't do if it didn't have rabies. But that doesn't change the fact that it has rabies.

All you have is the writer's imagination. You have a very limited time to take this imaginary person and bring the details of their life, as you perceive them, to life. You attempt to do to that as fully and as vibrantly as you can. It's depressing to read how much you've failed. And it's not even particularly instructive or necessary to read how you succeeded because in the end don't you have to judge that?

Along with the good qualities, if someone isn't vulnerable I can't be around them to a certain extent. And I don't mean vulnerable to me or vulnerable to me in a sexual way. I just mean vulnerable, period.

And if you say a word about this over the radio, the next wings you see will belong to the flies buzzing over your rotting corpse.

And may the best of you - for it will only be the best of you, and even then only in the rarest and briefest moments - succeed in framing that most basic of questions, 'how do we live?'

Art is not disposable. If you want it, you have to hold it and smell it and touch it and read the credits and enjoy it and put it on your wall.

Chicago my favourite American city. I'm very much a typical midwesterner, and I don't think the condition is curable.

Failure's a natural part of life.

Films take too long. There's too much BS, too much nonsense. If I want to do a play, I just call the theater, whether it's here, or in Paris or Mexico or Spain or London or whatever, and say, "I want to do this, are you interested?" They'll answer the next day. With a movie, it's all, "Oh, I see this film as blah blah blah." They don't know what you're talking about, they don't care.

For a while I wanted to be a professional baseball pitcher, and then I wanted to be a musician and then sometimes I think I'd like to start a store for gift-wrapping Christmas presents... But I feel I could do most things I set my mind to, except mechanical things, I'm not very good at that.

I always wanted to be fashionable.

I am inspired by the appearance of a bohemian of the new millennium.

I can have incredible self-discipline. But see, I think it's obviously a form of stupidity.

I don't care what other people think. I don't think it matters.

I don't have a saviour or a royal family.

I don't like things too overstated in the cut or too perfect.

I don't wake up drenched in sweat because I haven't been on stage in years.

I don't want a trillion-dollar empire to run.

I don't want to be boring. But that's not always easy.

I find it hard to pre-plan every element of everything I do. It's not my thing.

If you're too smart it can limit you because you spend so much time thinking that you don't do anything.

I grew tired of religion some time not long after birth. I believe in people, I believe in humans, I believe in a car, but I don't believe something I can't have absolutely no evidence of for millenniums. And it's funny, people think analysis or psychiatry is mad, and they go to church.

I have probably four or five male friends who have a real strong masculine side but some degree of a feminine side, too. They're pretty rare, whereas I think women with a masculine side are much less rare.

I like design, I like details, to me it is just another form of self-expression.

I like to direct movies, but I don't like to goof around for eight years talking about it. And it's pretty irritating to get a movie on. So to complicate it by having more irritation as a director, I don't really need it. And because I direct a great deal still, but in the theater, I kind of get that anyway. Which is not at all to say I would never do it again, or it would never happen again.

I like to direct movies, but I don't like to goof around for eight years talking about it.

I like to have fun at work. It's okay if I don't. I've had that a few times. But generally, I'm someone who has a lot of fun at work, because I like my job. I think it's a fantastic job, at least that part of it is a fantastic job. And I like to have fun, and I personally feel that whether you're talking about the cast or the crew or the director or any combination thereof, that when people feel involved and comfortable and they feel like their work is being supported, that's the best environment to do good work.

I love to watch good actors who surprise and amuse me.

Imagine how asleep or utterly unperceptive and clueless you would have to be not to see yourself as absurd for the most part.

I'm a little bit of a fabric lunatic.

I mean, a lot of time rehearsals are taken up with other things other than preparing a character.

I'm more comfortable with whatever's wrong with me than my father was whenever he felt he failed or didn't measure up to the standard he set.

I'm more likely to lose my temper on a film set than almost anywhere. Often the level of idiocy is so exalted that it's impossible to comprehend.

I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm not treating patients.

I'm supposed to be a pretty good theater actor.

I never wanted to be with someone who just hung around the house.

In New York in the Forties or Fifties, everybody's in a suit, an overcoat and a hat.

I only have two rules for my newly born daughter: she will dress well and never have sex.

I probably have more female friends than any man I've ever met. What I like about them is that almost always they're generally mentally tougher, and they're better listeners, and they're more capable of surviving things. And most of the women that I like have a haunted quality - they're sort of like women who live in a haunted house all by themselves.

I think 1973 was the nadir of fashion. When you watch the coverage from that era, you're struck by the astonishing ugliness of the clothes.

I think I was born at a time when an American male had so many advantages and opportunities that weren't available to men before or after, just a very brief period.

I think people seem to sort of associate me with danger. And I don't see that at all.

I think probably when I was little, after my brother turned on me, I just had to play by myself or with myself. I've always done that. I think either it's some kind of weirdly competitive streak or it takes my mind off whatever's bothering me.

I think with actors, if you just don't set about trying to crush their confidence immediately, you're usually OK.

It's a little bit hard to have personal things subject to public scrutiny, and it's a pressure that other people aren't under, but then they're under a lot of pressures that we're not under.

It seems whenever I've had a method or what I perceived to be an intellectual groundwork of some sort - a kind of game plan - it's always been the most morbid failure.

It's funny - people think analysis or psychiatry is mad, and THEY go to CHURCH.

It's not a field, I think, for people who need to have success every day: if you can't live with a nightly sort of disaster, you should get out. I wouldn't describe myself as lacking in confidence, but I would just say that the ghosts you chase you never catch.

It's tough to figure out how do we compete in Europe and North America, when obviously a living wage for us is very different than a living wage in Indonesia.