Alan Arkin Quotes

[The business is] more corporate and more formulaic and less experiential.

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I don't think it does the audience any good to know what I do to prepare. It keeps it more of a surprise. I don't feel like it has to be a mystery.

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Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Doe Quotes

Things are never going to turn out how you think they will.

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No matter how much time you spend reading books or following your intuition, you're gonna screw it up. Fifty times. You can't do parenting right.

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Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Book Quotes , Reading Quotes

Truth is always unfolding. It's not an absolute.

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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.

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Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Real Quotes , Order Quotes

All I can say is if the part doesn't delight me in some way, or I can't feel any compassion for it, I just can't do it.

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Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Compassion Quotes , Delight Quotes

That's what we're all doing, all the time, whether we know it or not. Whether we like it or not. Creating something on the spur of the moment with the materials at hand. We might just as well let the rest of it go, join the party, and dance our hearts out.

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Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Party Quotes , Heart Quotes

But one of the things I learned from improvising is that all of life is an improvisation, whether you like it or not. Some of the greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th century came out of people dropping things.

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Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Discovery Quotes , People Quotes

If you want to be an actor and you love acting, you can do it whether you're doing something else or not. You can be connected with community theater or make your own little movies. But, if you want to be a movie star, you've got a tough road ahead of you.

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Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Stars Quotes , Community Quotes

A product is most easily sold when it has an identity. So they wrap you all up and put a label on you. And then that's what you have to be. But what I'm looking for is the opportunity to explore what I can do, probing the limits, learning.

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Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Opportunity Quotes , Identity Quotes

I know that if I can't move people, then I have no business being an actor.

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Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Moving Quotes , People Quotes

I used to watch the world as if it was a performance and I would realize that certain things that people did moved me, and certain things didn't move me, and I tried to analyze, even at that age, six and seven and eight, why I was moved by certain things they did

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Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Moving Quotes , Eight Quotes

Creativity means learning where the rules exist, and then breaking them! Saying, "It's better this way." But you have to know the rules in order to break them with any grace.

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Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Mean Quotes , Creativity Quotes

I don't believe there's anything in life you can't go back and fix. The ancient Vedas - the oldest Hindu philosophy - and modern science agree that time is an illusion. If that's true, there's no such thing as a past or a future - it's all one huge now. So what you fix now affects the past and the future.

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Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Philosophy Quotes , Believe Quotes

I read somewhere that some people believe that the entire universe is a matrix of living thought. And I said, "Man, if that's not a definition of God, I don't know what is.

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Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Believe Quotes , Men 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.

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No matter what you do or where you are, you're going to be missing out on something.

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Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Missing Quotes , Matter 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.

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Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Trying Quotes , Acting Quotes

I played guitar. I've always considered myself an actor, but I wasn't making a living as an actor. So I was in a couple of folk groups that managed to keep me in underwear and burritos.

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Tags : Alan Arkin Quotes , Couple Quotes , Guitar Quotes