James Earl Jones Quotes
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One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter.
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The goal wasn't to be a millionaire or to be a Hollywood star. That was not the goal. The goal was something about - the goal was to find the goal, but I knew where it was.
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The arts have always been an important ingredient to the health of a nation, but we haven't gotten there yet.
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I think the extent to which I have any balance at all, any mental balance, is because of being a farm kid and being raised in those isolated rural areas.
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There is not enough magic in a bloodline to forge an instant, irrevocable bond.
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I don't ever want to be a sentimentalist. I prefer to be a realist. I'm not a romantic really.
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It has to be real, and I think a lot of the problems we have as a society is because we don't acknowledge that family is important, and it has to be people who are present, you know, and mothers and fathers, both are not present enough with children.
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You sang in church, you know, and you didn't act at all. You tried not to act, you tried to tell the truth. The idea of being a troubadour on the road singing for your supper was very disturbing to him.
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So in my sophomore year, I took a senior anatomy class. I thought anatomy - being the thing that I should be most interested in - and if I could hack, as we called it, a senior class, I would continue. I didn't hack the senior class.
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People who lusted after Marilyn Monroe had no idea she stuttered. It is the secret of her sexiness, actually.
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Speech is a very important aspect of being human. A whisper doesn't cut it.
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You cannot be an actor like I am and not have been in some of the worst movies like I have. But I stand before you deeply honored, mighty grateful and just plain gobsmacked.
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I got out of the Army - in my world - I came to New York, for instance, when the civil rights movement was just beginning, and that created a certain energy, a certain rumble, a certain impetus for black actors.
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When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language.
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No one asked me to be an actor, so no one owed me. There was no entitlement.
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Actors never discuss future plans.
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I knew real show business from my father, who had been an actor since he left the world of boxing.
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In the wintertime, in the snow country, citrus fruit was so rare, and if you got one, it was better than ambrosia.
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I love to see actors' work. I love to surf channels late at night and accidentally run into movies I hadn't seen before. It makes me very proud of the profession.
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Before my grandpa built his own church, we went to the neighboring town, and it was a white community. You know, up north, mostly middle European people and Indians, Chippewa Indians. We were welcome to that church, but once we got in, they didn't know what to do with us.
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More and more, when I single out the person out who inspired me most, I go back to my grandfather.
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When I was in New York after I left the Army, I studied for two years at the American Theater Wing, studied acting, which involved dance and fencing and speech classes and history of theater, all that.
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I was preparing myself for the theater, and... I got a little job here and a job there, but it wasn't going well, and I considered some time before the mid-60s that maybe I should consider something else.
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You weren't going to the theater to change the world, but you had a chance to affect the world, the thinking and the feelings of the world.