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  • Alan Arkin Quotes   41
  • I had a hard time treating my field as if it’s horse racing, putting actors in competition against each other. I see how the industry and the studios feel it’s important, but I don’t really have a feeling for being in competition. I want to feel sympathetic and close to others, not opposed to them.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Horse Quotes , Hard Times Quotes
  • Hollywood is a strange place. The class structure here is more rigid than almost anyplace I've ever experienced. It's made more difficult by the fact that it's constantly changing. You never know what class you belong to unless you're one of the two or three people that have been in the same echelon for a long, long time.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Strange Places Quotes , Class Quotes
  • Is it possible to have an endless series of successes without falling on our faces? I suppose it is, but I think it would entail doing the same things over and over again without taking chances, without taking risks or exploring our limits, without finding out what we can and can't do.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Fall Quotes , Thinking Quotes
  • For many years my acting came from a place of surmounting some enormous obstacle, confronting some stern and faceless judge who would condemn me to a pit of hell if I didn't achieve the "zone," if even for a moment. Not a particularly happy place to work from.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Years Quotes , Judging Quotes
  • Improvisation sometimes seemed more like jazz than acting, like verbal jazz, with the actors playing a theme back and forth, and then introducing another theme, incorporating it, somehow trying to work their way all together to a meaning of some kind, or at least a conclusion.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Trying Quotes , Acting Quotes
  • I don't live in L.A. on purpose because I don't wanna be immersed in that. I have to have a real life, with real people, in order to inform what I'm doing; otherwise, it just becomes the snake eating its own tail. Vampirism.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Real Quotes , Order Quotes
  • What I've learned about teaching is to refer back to the root of that word, which is educo, which means "to pull from." Education does not mean jamming information into somebody's head. Rather, it's that ancient idea that all knowledge is within us; to teach is to help somebody pull it out of themselves.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Teaching Quotes , Mean Quotes
  • TV has taken reflection out of the human condition. People didn't use to have a ready answer for everything, whether they knew something about it or not. People think they have to have an answer for everything because the guys on TV have an answer for everything. But it's bullsh**t! Reflection is crucial.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Taken Quotes , Thinking Quotes