Harry Dean Stanton Quotes
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I never liked being ordered around - which, of course, was an overreaction. I eventually found out that I didn't mind being ordered around at all when it was by someone who knew what he was doing.
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I do all the classics, like Dylan, Kristofferson, Jimmy Reed, Mexican mariachi songs, some jazz songs from the '30s. Cole Porter's 'Begin the Beguine,' that's one of my favorites.
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I sang barber shop harmony and sort of got into performing. And it just came naturally. Then, when I was in college after the war, I did a play, Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw. And from then on, I knew that's what I wanted to do.
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I really liked the Mariachi singing in Westerns.
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I do the same series of five exercises 21 times each day - an ancient Tibetan practice that stimulates your chakras.
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Paris, Texas gave me a chance to play compassion, and I'm spelling that with a capital C.
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Every actor is a character actor.
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The most terrifying thing for most everybody in the whole Western World is to take responsibility for your own life and to experience real freedom.
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I've passed up opportunities. I've avoided the spotlight. I've never been to Academy Awards, didn't relate to them.
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The first music I remember hearing was the traditional songs of Kentucky - things like 'Roll Along Kentucky Moon.'
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I sing and play guitar and harmonica. I've been doing it for a long time.
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Speech lessons probably did more for my singing voice - they teach you breathing, resonance.
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My father and mother were not that compatible. I don't think they had a good wedding night, and I was the product of that. We weren't close.
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The band I've played with for 10 or 12 years now, we've been all over, but we mostly play in LA.
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I'm big into Eastern concepts. The horror of life, the love of children, the whole phantasmagoria - it's all meaningless. Be still, and see what happens. All of life unfolds perfectly. You have to get beyond consciousness.
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I could have been a lot more famous and played leading men and everything. For whatever reason, I didn't go for it.
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I've always been a searcher - you know, a hunter. I'm certainly not the only one. They say actors shouldn't get political and everything, but you can't separate yourself. You can't disconnect yourself from anything.
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I used to sing when I was six years old. When the family would leave the house, I'd get up on the stool and sing. 'T for Texas, T for Tenessee, T for Thelma, the gal that made a wreck out of me.' I was in love with my babysitter. She was 18. I was six.
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I made it a point not to graduate. I thought that was a positive, independent kind of statement.
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I've never seen a Western that was really truthful. Most are just morality plays. Good guys and bad guys - and the good guys always win, whereas in reality, most of the sheriffs were as bad as the gangsters they were after.
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Casting is a convoluted kind of trip. No one likes to be typed - even if you're a cab driver, or whatever you do.
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I always had a dramatic flair. I'd like to dress up like a cowboy, play make-believe. But I didn't realize acting was something I had to do until I got to college.
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I was the classic killer. I always played an angry man. I think it was because I used to really be like that - I was hostile. And because I had a good sense of theatrical truth, I used my anger and rebelliousness and just went with it. Anger was just a part of me.
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I'm just dealing with what's happening, with what is. Joy, happiness, good, bad, all those terms are meaningless to me.