Peter O'Toole Quotes
-
Most difficult thing in the world, to write a play. Do you know the story of Shaw at the Fabian society? H.G. Welles said "I'm terribly sorry I've missed the last five meetings, I've been terribly busy, I'm engaged in writing a scientific pamphlet on the effects of radioactivity in 1984 and I've produced a novel, and various pieces of science fiction to do, and I've had a bit of personal trouble, and I had my copy to bring out for the newspaper." Shaw leapt up and said, "I've not missed one meeting, and I have written a play!" hardest thing in the world. If it were easy they'd all be at it.
-
I'm a working stiff, baby, just like everybody else.
-
If you can't do something willingly and joyfully, then don't do it.
-
What kind of people we become depends crucially on the stories we are nurtured on.
-
In the theater you can chain a blue-assed baboon in the stalls and with a good script, good actors, and a good set you'd have what is called a production. With the cinema someone has to know about lenses and fine things. I have no time for the "auteur de cinema." To me, it's meaningless.
-
Always a bridesmaid never a bride my foot!
-
I wouldn't mind being a lord.
-
If you can't do something willingly and joyfully, then don't do it. If you give up drinking, don't go moaning about it; go back on the bottle. Do. As. Thou. Wilt.
-
Question: How do you know you're God? Answer: Simple. When I pray to him, I find I'm talking to myself.
-
If I'm not at my study by 10:00, 10:30, forget it, I can't write a word.
-
We were in the Arabian Desert for nine months. And I was having the time of my life. It could have been an archeological expedition, a military expedition.
-
George Eliot is my only steady girlfriend. We go to bed together every night.
-
We were doing it under the most extraordinary circumstances, but the first out of the tent in the morning would be David Lean. He said to me on the very first day of shooting, Pete, this is the beginning of a great adventure.
-
I have no memories I'm prepared to share with you.
-
I will not be an ordinary man, because I have a right to be extraordinary.
-
It was a mistake and I made the mistake because I was conservative and played safe. And that way lies failure." "Must do it... constantly go to the well... constantly try, try, try. Dare. Dare, Dare. Who dares wins.
-
And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
-
I love working with young people, which is to me a big kick.
-
If you cannot say what you mean, your majesty, you will never mean what you say and a gentleman should always mean what he says.
-
Anything an artist does is to show ourselves as we really are, which is a complex thing. I don't think that one work of Philosophy or Art, or Letters, or Acting, or Middle Playing, or Tightrope Walking, or Flea Circuses has made mankind better, if by better you mean kinder, wiser, more tolerant of each other. One thing self knowledge. Knoticayton: know thyself.
-
There are only two things one has to bear in mind. One has to be credulous - able to believe - and skeptical - able to not believe, because if you are not skeptical, you will believe rubbish. If you are not credulous you will learn nothing and the only way to balance those two is to recognize the mystery of things.
-
When my father would come home from the track after a good day, the whole room would light up; it was fairyland. But when he lost, it was black. In our house, it was always either a wake ... or a wedding.
-
My professional acting life, stage and screen, has brought me public support, emotional fulfillment and material comfort. It has brought me together with fine people, good companions with whom I've shared the inevitable lot of all actors: flops and hits.
-
Life turned out much better than I thought. I knew after a little while that I could act.