Alan Alda Quotes
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Originality is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe - you can't take a taxi.
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Artists try to say things that can't be said. in a fragile net of words, gestures, or colors, we hope to capture a feeling; a taste; a painful longing. but the net is always too porous, and we are left with the sweet frustration of almost knowing, which is teasingly pleasurable.
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I try to find out what there is in the character that in a way, you can't put into words. If I could put it into words, then it wouldn't be a performance. And if I do put it into words, as I play it, I start to get boxed in by those words.
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You can't be aware of everything. You'd fall down the stairs if you were aware of every intricate thing involved in going down stairs.
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I read science, because to me, that's extremely exciting. It's like a great detective story, and it's happening right in front of us.
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I don't miss directing at all, and I don't miss screenwriting either because somebody's always telling you to do something different.
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I think most people are interested in our origins; once we understand, it might be easier to become the people we'd like to be. Or, better, become the people we think we already are.
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When I got recognized as a writer, when I got the Emmy, I was more excited than the Emmys I had gotten as an actor.
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You can't get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you're doing. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself.
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What I can't completely understand is most other people's fascination with what the famous among us do with their lips and the rest of their bodies. Why do ordinary people become the target of this curiosity simply by virtue of the fact that other people recognize their names and faces but know nothing else about them? Why do we care what they think, what they wear, what they eat?
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It's better to be wise than to be smart.
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I've sat looking down into a volcano that could blow at any moment; I've helped catch a shark and several rattlesnakes; I let a tarantula walk across my hand, and I ate rat soup.
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There is a wonderful feeling of power when you're a director, but I don't think I need that, and I'm OK without it.
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Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You cannot get there by bus, only by hard work, risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you will discover will be wonderful; yourself.
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What then are doing if not creating a better place together? I think, for me the key has to be, what do I want to create? What is it I want to leave behind?
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Awards can give you a tremendous amount of encouragement to keep getting better, no matter how young or old you are.
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Be as smart as you can, but remember that it is always better to be wise than to be smart.
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The idea that the brain is not fully formed until you are almost 30 years old has already been introduced, and the Supreme Court already has based two rulings on it.
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Working on The West Wing was similar in many ways to my experience on M*A*S*H, because you had people willing to work late at night to get it just right.
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My father sang well, and he was a handsome man. When he walked down the street, people sometimes mistook him for Cary Grant and asked for his autograph.
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What's funny is that you can think you really value your life until you almost lose it.
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When the greatest hero in the history of my party, Abraham Lincoln, debated, he didn't need any rules, ... We could junk the rules.
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Really top-notch directors, I've often worked with them just to see how they work.
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Marie Curie is my hero. Few people have accomplished something so rare - changing science. And as hard as that is, she had to do it against the tide of the culture at the time - the prejudice against her as a foreigner, because she was born in Poland and worked in France. And the prejudice against her as a woman.