Peter O'Toole Quotes
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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.
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I'm a working stiff, baby, just like everybody else.
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There's a remedy for everything except death.
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I wouldn't mind being a lord.
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Always a bridesmaid never a bride my foot!
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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.
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What kind of people we become depends crucially on the stories we are nurtured on.
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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.
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Question: How do you know you're God? Answer: Simple. When I pray to him, I find I'm talking to myself.
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George Eliot is my only steady girlfriend. We go to bed together every night.
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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.
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If I'm not at my study by 10:00, 10:30, forget it, I can't write a word.
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I have no memories I'm prepared to share with you.
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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.
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I will not be an ordinary man, because I have a right to be extraordinary.
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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.
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And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
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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.
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Life turned out much better than I thought. I knew after a little while that I could act.
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I love working with young people, which is to me a big kick.
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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.
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I wish to hazard my soul to opportunity.
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Actors have to stay optimistic. The moment we start thinking otherwise, we're dead.
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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.