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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.
Alan Alda -
When they called me up and asked me if I wanted to work with them, they just told me a little bit about the character and the story. They hadn't finished writing it yet. He's a very three-dimensional character, which is really what I've always looked forward to playing in any story I was in.
Alan Alda
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Be as smart as you can, but remember that it is always better to be wise than to be smart.
Alan Alda -
Nothing important was ever accomplished without chutzpah. Columbus had chutzpah. The signers of the Declaration of Independence had chutzpah. Don't ever aim doubt at yourself. Laugh at yourself, but don't doubt yourself.
Alan Alda -
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.
Alan Alda -
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.
Alan Alda -
If you don't listen deeply, the connection won't take place.... [You have to be] willing to be changed by the person you're listening to, where you're not just waiting for a pause so you can say your thing, but you're actually letting them have an effect on you if they can.
Alan Alda -
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.
Alan Alda
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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.
Alan Alda -
Blind dates are treacherous. You don't know who this person is. You wonder, 'Should I call my grandma during coffee to get out of this?'
Alan Alda -
Some of the greatest things, as I understand, they have come about by serendipity, the greatest discoveries.
Alan Alda -
The difference between listening and pretending to listen, I discovered, is enormous. One is fluid, the other is rigid. One is alive, the other is stuffed. Eventually, I found a radical way of thinking about listening. Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you. When I’m willing to let them change me, something happens between us that’s more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues.
Alan Alda -
Really top-notch directors, I've often worked with them just to see how they work.
Alan Alda -
After a while I started to think of that as an image of something that went a lot deeper than the dead dog, which is you can't bring back anything to life.
Alan Alda
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Whenever you wonder about yourself, look up at the stars swirling around in the heavens and just realize how tiny and puny they are. They're supposed to be gigantic explosions and they're just these insignificant little dots. If you step back from things far enough you realize how important and powerful you are.
Alan Alda -
For humans, flying isn't magic, it's physics.
Alan Alda -
When the greatest hero in the history of my party, Abraham Lincoln, debated, he didn't need any rules, ... We could junk the rules.
Alan Alda -
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.
Alan Alda -
It's too bad I'm not as wonderful a person as people say I am, because the world could use a few people like that.
Alan Alda -
What's funny is that you can think you really value your life until you almost lose it.
Alan Alda
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I'm in this wonderful position where I can do what interests me. And whatever comes along that interests me, I do. The rest of the time I bother scientists about communicating.
Alan Alda -
There's plenty of money to be had. But you also lose your soul.
Alan Alda -
I used to be an amateur inventor when I was a kid; I'm always inventing something.
Alan Alda -
The hardest thing for me about making movies, and that included 'M*A*S*H' because it was made like a movie, was starting and stopping.
Alan Alda