Terrence McNally Quotes
I like to surprise myself. I've always been attracted to projects where I don't know how they're going to turn out.
Quotes to Explore
-
You have to dream before your dreams can come true.
-
I played small forward on the basketball team. I also ran the 300 hurdles.
-
It was my father who taught us that an immigrant must work twice as hard as anybody else, that he must never give up.
-
I know I've got a degree. Why does that mean I have to spend my life with intellectuals? I've got a lifesaving certificate but I don't spend my evenings diving for a rubber brick with my pyjamas on.
-
I keep my house tidy, because then I can think clearly. I feel the same about myself. Presenting yourself well is a working-class thing - my dad was a printer, but he wore a tie most days. The ungroomed look belongs more to the middle classes.
-
Every actor looks all his life for a part that will combine his talents with his personality... 'The Odd Couple' was mine. That was the plutonium I needed. It all started happening after that.
-
Nearly every coach I've talked with tells me that the attention you get from media and other people is the thing you miss most. I don't know if that's right.
-
My mum had four kids on her own, so if I had one kid with one nanny and not a full-time job, it would be a joke. And I think the impossible happens when you leave your kids. I've seen so many nannies in the park on their phones, and the kids are running off.
-
My mobile phone battery runs out all the time because all the messages come straight to me.
-
My father is my idol, so I always did everything like him. He used to work two jobs and still come home happy every night.
-
France is the only place where you can make love in the afternoon without people hammering on your door.
-
I approach my character with the question: What would an animal think? How would an animal respond? A lot of times, it's quick action and no fear, and sometimes it's irrational fear. You don't always know.
-
There is properly no history; only biography.
-
The thing about happiness is that it doesnt help you to grow; only unhappiness does that. So I'm grateful that my bed of roses was made up equally of blossoms and thorns. I've had a privileged, creative, exciting life, and I think that the parts that were less joyous were preparing me, testing me, strengthening me.
-
I happen to be notorious. That, I have no control over.
-
People need to spread love towards strangers. We all bleed the same blood and we are all part of a global community now.
-
Traveling around sure gets me down and lonely, nothing else to do but close my mind. I sure hope the road don't come to own me, there's so many dreams I've yet to find. But you're so far away.
-
Woe and death to all who resist my will!
-
When you turn up for work, especially with looking down the barrel of a show, you're hoping the person you're acting opposite of is going to be on your kind of crazy wavelength.
-
It doesn't surprise me that aspect of the black nationalist movement, the cultural side, has triumphed because that is the aspect of the movement that was most commodifiable and when we look at the commodification of blackness we're looking at a phenomenon that's very profitable and it's connection with the rise of a black middle class I think is very obvious.
-
You never want your second act or the whole movie to just be this relentless march towards its goal. You want things to take the audience by surprise.
-
I like to surprise myself. I've always been attracted to projects where I don't know how they're going to turn out.
