Mike Nichols Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“The whole point about laughter is it's like mercury: you can't catch it, you can't catch what motivates it - that's why it's funny.”

“You want to make money, remake 'Cinderella.' You want to move people, remake the Hippolytus and Phaedra myth.”

“All the theories that acting is reacting to imaginary circumstances as though they are real, and directing is turning psychology into behavior, those are all stabs at something that can't be taught. All the great actors can't talk about what they do, and they don't want to begin to talk about it. They just do it.”

“There are absolutely almost perfect people who experience no guilt; they don't know what it is. They simply do what they need to do - or want to do - next. They see nothing wrong with it. They feel no guilt. They express no guilt. And it's not even certain what harm they do.”

“You can always tell gifted and highly intelligent people as they always turn to the past. Any young person who knows anything that happened before 1980, or 1990, or 2000 for that matter, is immediately someone who is intelligent, probably creative, maybe a writer. Nobody who is drawn to the past and learning about the past is not gifted.”

“I love to take actors to a place where they open a vein. That's the job. The key is that I make it safe for them to open the vein.”

“I think that to make something alive, instead of on a page, is an honorable task. And it turns me on.”

“In a weird way, when I was looking back, I didn't know I was going to be a director until I was.”

“Limitations are inspiring: they lead to thinking, so I don't mind them.”

“The things that you saw earlier in your life generally have more power than the things you saw last week.”