100+ Edward Norton Quotes | InspiringQuotes.us

source: - "Interview: 'Leaves of Grass' Star Edward Norton and Director Tim Blake Nelson". Interview with Landon Palmer, filmschoolrejects.com. March 28, 2010.

Topics: Fun, Mean, Two

It's dismaying to see the unilateralism that the government is doing.

Topics: Government, Unilateralism

There are so many people who are conscientious and caring about others. I've spent time working in countries where I really noticed the absence of civic concern, care for other people. I've been in other countries where I feel a palpable, almost tooth-and-claw attitude between people - Machiavellian, me and mine. And you can take for granted being here, with all the bloviating and the media, on a day-to-day level, people in this country are really pretty concerned for each other.

source: - Interview with Bennett Miller, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 3, 2014.

Topics: Country, Attitude, Caring, Really Pretty

A lot of people ask, "What do you pull on in your own life from your character?" In all honesty, it's not something that really works that way for me. I tend to look at these things as an imaginative process and a challenge of imagination and empathy, to some degree. I get much more out of meeting people who have lived these lives than I do digging around in my own limited experiences.

Topics: Honesty, Character, People

I've already spent a lot of my life doing what makes me go. There's a life out there while I'm still young, able to move, able to just sit at peace in the water - I should be spending much more time doing that, rather than continuing to go through this artistic struggle.

source: - Interview with Bennett Miller, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 3, 2014.

Topics: Struggle, Moving, Water

The thing I'm absolutely convinced of, no matter how crazy - technological the world is getting, is that people feel more connected through the good works. Entertainment, and the sort of soporific effect it has on people and their stress, is one thing.

source: - Interview with Bennett Miller, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 3, 2014.

Topics: Crazy, Stress, People

People think because I went to Yale that that implies privilege, and it is a privilege in the sense that it's an incredible opportunity.

Topics: Opportunity, Thinking, Yale

I don't feel insecure about any of this work anymore. Maybe I don't have what I had when I was younger. I'm not really hungry to prove anything to anybody, really. But when I stand outside myself and observe what I think are my strengths and weaknesses going into directing, it's what you just said, an affliction to organize moments.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Insecure, Thinking, Weakness

I don't think you should sit around and wait for people to give you an opportunity to express yourself or do your work, or whatever. Actors have to be producers and writers have to be producers.

source: - Source: collider.com

Topics: Opportunity, Thinking, People

Sometimes their oppression of emotion and the weird way it comes out is more interesting than painting it in bold primary colors.

source: - Interview with Scott Tobias, film.avclub.com. January 3, 2007.

Topics: Color, Interesting, Way, Primary Colors

I studied French forever, and when do I ever speak French? I clearly should have studied Spanish. I wish I had stuck with music, because that would still be great. I really wish I had learned to surf earlier in my life.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Should Have, Speaks French, Forever

I think technology is having a democratising effect on film.

source: - Source: www.theguardian.com

Topics: Technology, Thinking, Film

When I'm looking for Zen and I'm not saying this facetiously at all - I would really rather surf, scuba dive, or fly my plane. And, when I feel tension about the grind of work, it's not getting the money to make films versus making films that constitutes the grind, it's all this stuff.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Scuba, Stuff, Surf

You're always choosing the start point and the end point. And almost by definition, the most interesting period is where something happens, as a result of which something is different at the end. And so to me, the idea that you know everything about a character at the beginning is sort of ridiculous. Something has to be revealed. I like it when the deeper you go with the character, the more you see the layers start to peel away. It's more challenging to me, but it's also just interesting. Those are the things I like to watch. I like to watch the evolutions of something.

source: - Source: film.avclub.com

Topics: Character, Interesting, Challenges

I think it's a total fallacy for people to say, "You couldn't make those old movies today." I think there's more ways to get a movie made today than ever in the history of the entertainment industry. It's a very exciting time to work in movies, if you're a creative person looking to make a very personal, weird vision.

source: - Source: film.avclub.com

Topics: Thinking, People, Creative, Old Movie

As an actor, I don't have any politics. As an actor, I'm driven more by an authentic - I would say an obsessive-compulsive-disorder level-fixation on mimicry, tonality of voice, to literally imitate something until I can just disappear into it.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Voice, Obsessive Compulsive, Actors, Mimicry, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

I just don't think most of us are aware how much of what we throw away ends up in the ocean, for starters. Plastic bags are among the worst. The US is actually falling behind the curve on that score. China and many other countries have already banned the production and use of thin plastic bags.

source: - "Earth Chats: Edward Norton". The Washington Post Live Chat, www.slate.com. April 22, 2008.

Topics: Country, Ocean, Fall, Plastic Bags, Falling Behind

I hear about actors being exterior actors and actors being instinctual actors and I always think it's crap. Anybody who knows anything about it knows that good actors do both - they do inside-outward and they do outside-inward. You can't not do both.

source: - "Interview: 'Leaves of Grass' Star Edward Norton and Director Tim Blake Nelson". filmschoolrejects.com. March 28, 2010.

Topics: Thinking, Inward, Actors, Good Actors

If you try to make interesting films, you're going to be disappointed most of the time. I choose just not to look at it that way. I don't look at American History X as a failure, or Fight Club as a failure, or 25th Hour as a failure, or Larry Flynt as a failure, or any of the movies that I care about that I've made that were not immediately successful. I'll stand with those movies any day over 90 percent of the movies that came out at the same time that made a hundred million dollars

source: - Source: film.avclub.com

Topics: Successful, Fighting, Interesting

When I look at the directors that I really love, who really develop their films over time, they're almost always the ones who go back again and again and again at the same investigations. I think that when somebody has a theme they go after, it's fun to service that. It's like, "I know you now. I know what you go at." It helps you locate yourself a little bit quicker in their world.

source: - Source: film.avclub.com

Topics: Fun, Thinking, World

Making really great music, making really great films, writing great books is an antidote to all of that. And, as people, as artists, some of the massive disruption that technology is causing is so exciting, the way that people can share creativity now.

source: - Interview with Bennett Miller, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 3, 2014.

Topics: Book, Writing, Creativity, Film Writing, Music Making

But look at Avatar (2009), one of the most globally viewed pieces of entertainment to have ever been made - the central emotional event of the whole movie was a tree being cut down. And the entire movie, essentially, is saying, "If we let the military industrial complex trash the place that we're living in, we will have committed an epic crime."

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Military, Cutting, Epic

When I think of my background, if I was privileged on any level, it was in terms of the kind of exposure to experience and bohe-mian cultural influence that my parents and my uncles and my grandfather gave me. On both sides I come from an extremely eccentric, artsy, intellectually intense, activist family.

Topics: Uncles, Thinking, Parent

The Zionist Tulsa Jew who's pugnacious is a reality. I grew up around it. And I think it's really, really funny and surprising and unlikely.

Topics: Reality, Thinking, Tulsa

I start to get fixated on a story and a character and an idea, and at a certain point, I really want to do it. It's a compulsion to explore a specific thing, as opposed to a compulsion to direct, generally speaking.

source: - Interview with Bennett Miller, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 3, 2014.

Topics: Character, Ideas, Stories

Even my wife and two of my children are in "Leaves of Grass". Because I love the source material so much, it was really easy to write and an utter delight to get to direct because I had people like Edward [Norton] elevating the material and surprising me in their interpretations of all of this stuff that's so close to me.

Topics: Children, Writing, Two

But work that's got real substance does make people feel, "There's someone else out there who relates to my experience, or who just helped me understand my own experience a little bit better." And I think that's still got enormous value.

source: - Interview with Bennett Miller, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 3, 2014.

Topics: Real, Thinking, People

You dream as an actor's director of letting moments breathe through two-shots.

Topics: Dream, Two, Directors

Screenplays aren't written to be read, they're written to be made into movies.

Topics: Made, Screenplays, Written

As an actor, if you step to the side and you look at [Thornton's performance] technically, and you try to imagine doing what he was doing, most people would panic. Most people would be on the set, and they would be panicking, going, "I'm not doing anything!" All the ham instincts in you would be screaming, "You've got to indicate something here." And it's beautiful, in a way. And so I appreciate, even as an audience member, the courage that it takes to be... frankly, to be subtle.

source: - Interview with Scott Tobias, film.avclub.com. January 3, 2007.

Topics: Beautiful, People, Appreciate

Suspension of disbelief and that whole question is part of the heart of the 'Leaves of Grass'movie.

Topics: Heart, Leaves Of Grass, Disbelief, Suspension Of Disbelief

I've never acted before in a movie I've directed. This felt like the time to do it just because the " Leaves of Grass" movie itself is so much of a platform for the lead actor. It's really written for an exciting performance and it really depends on the audience watching an extraordinary actor having a great time pulling off this feat. It makes sense to me as a director to act in support of that.

Topics: Support, Actors, Leaves Of Grass

I like to get into a lot of things besides movies. I've been very involved with a few specific efforts. We built this park in New York and it's been a very successful project... I worked on a conservation project in East Africa... Too much of this type of stuff can get you wrapped up in your own work and I love it.

source: - "Interview: 'Leaves of Grass' Star Edward Norton and Director Tim Blake Nelson". Interview with Landon Palmer, filmschoolrejects.com. March 28, 2010.

Topics: New York, Successful, Effort, East Africa

Most of the movies that I've made that I really felt good about and cared about made very little money anyway, so I'm not particularly worried about people downloading and sharing them.

source: - Source: www.theguardian.com

Topics: People, Littles, Worried

I've been friends with the guys in Radiohead for a lot of years, and I watch the way those guys work with incredible envy. Because whatever the slings and arrows of dealing with the record business, at the end of the day, they have total creative autonomy. They don't need a lot to do what they do, and Thom [Yorke] and Jonny [Greenwood] and the guys have their own joint in their hometown.

source: - Interview with Bennett Miller, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 3, 2014.

Topics: Years, Arrows, Envy, Radiohead, Slings And Arrows

There are things you do for the fun of doing them or to work or to hang with certain people. But the projects that I've invested myself in and cared about most deeply have absolutely been activated by a desire to chase something that I relate to, or that I see as having the potential to speak to someone else directly.

Topics: Fun, People, Desire

To me, Fight Club was a comedy. When [David] Fincher sent me the book and I read it, the first thing I asked him was, "This is a comedy, right?" he said, "Yeah, that's the whole point," and I said, "Okay, I'm in." I certainly wasn't imagining myself as a dramatic actor when I was running around in my underwear in that film.

Topics: Running, Book, Fighting

For Keeping the Faith, I looked at [George ] Cukor's old films like The Philadelphia Story, stuff that's hilariously funny and really smart with a cutting critique in the humor, too. With this, when I read it, I was laughing a lot.

Topics: Smart, Cutting, Philadelphia, Really Smart

In a very philosophic sense I think doing the work is itself a good thing. But at the end of the day, since we're taking other people's shekels to do it, and their work is being able to make a return out of it, it forces you to consider the fact that you're doing it for other people. The whole construct is built around the assumption that it's going to get shared, and that someone else is going to find value in it - entertainment, catharsis, enlightenment, or whatever.

source: - Interview with Bennett Miller, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 3, 2014.

Topics: Thinking, People, The End Of The Day

What we set out to do with this movie [Leaves of Grass] was to create something that was funny and serious and had large tonal ambitions. A movie that could be poignant and funny, and suddenly quite violent. To have a character utterly sideswiped, and to learn that life is about balance.

Topics: Ambition, Character, Balance

There is a lot of interesting product coming to market already. Bags and bottles and cups and such made of potato starch and other fully biodegradable materials. In some sense, plastic is more chemically complex. We ought to be able to simplify.

source: - "Earth Chats: Edward Norton". The Washington Post Live Chat, www.slate.com. April 22, 2008.

Topics: Interesting, Bags, Bottles, Biodegradable

I'm an actor, and, beyond that, the thing I do most compulsively is writing. So I come at it very much from this sense of character. I get interested in people. And I feel confident in my capacity to absorb and manifest the characteristics of people. I have a real auditory hang-up for dialogue; re-creating the way people talk really is an addiction in my brain.

source: - Interview with Bennett Miller, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 3, 2014.

Topics: Real, Character, Writing, Auditory

I grow tired of intelligence having such a limited manifestation in movies - "intelligence" usually meaning coastal, with a certain level of formal education.

Topics: Tired, Levels, Coastal

But at the same time, the film industry just got torched. The risk tolerance for the types of movies we're talking about is lower, and the reason for that is that the captains of the industry were asleep at the switch when their core business was being disrupted. And they're never getting it back. In a way, it makes it all the more exciting when the good ones get through.

source: - Interview with Bennett Miller, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 3, 2014.

Topics: Talking, Tolerance, Risk

Everyone thinks that Fight Club is a very important and successful film, but it was a massive box-office failure. Massive. It was a big flop by any commercial-release standard. And it's been a huge hit on DVD. Everything that movie has become has been on DVD. So you can't stake your sense of creative success on this whole box-office-performance matrix, because if you do, you're going to be disappointed most of the time.

source: - Source: film.avclub.com

Topics: Successful, Fighting, Thinking

The elegance of staying with a moment, without needing to stop and change all the lighting, made [the alternative] seem lazy and indulgent.

source: - Interview with Bennett Miller, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 3, 2014.

Topics: Lazy, Alternatives, Moments

People say you can't make movies about your politics or the environment. And, generally speaking, I completely divide those sides of my brain.

source: - Interview with Bennett Miller, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 3, 2014.

Topics: People, Brain, Sides

If you feel like someone just knows what this is about to their core, they're going to have that special confidence in it.You stop looking at the seams and they start inhabiting the same space and start interacting with each .

source: - "Interview: 'Leaves of Grass' Star Edward Norton and Director Tim Blake Nelson". filmschoolrejects.com. March 28, 2010.

Topics: Space, Special, Feels

It's ginned up by the corporate plutocracy as a way of distracting the working-class people that it's screwing. We hamstring our own natural progressivism in this country, and that's really stupid.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Country, Stupid, Class, Hamstrings, Progressivism

On the downside, to paraphrase Thom Yorke talking about the music business, we're still having to deal with the stench of the last fart of the dying corpse of this regressive vision that America is a white, middle-aged, male, conservative country.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Country, Talking, White

My greatest hope is that we transcend the most fearful thing, which is that we are rapidly degrading the ecological systems on this planet that support everything we are doing and all life on it.

source: - Interview with Bennett Miller, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 3, 2014.

Topics: Support, Planets, Degrading

There are tens of thousands of charities and hundreds of thousands, getting towards millions, of people now using it. And when I flip through it, I'm just blown away by people.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: People, Flip, Charity, Blown Away

This place [USA] is exploding with young people who are - they're like Nietzsche's hammer - going to break everything and make something better. The creative energy in this country, and what people are coming up with is very hopeful.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Country, Usa, People, Creative Energy

I come from a family of conservation activists, and so I've had a strong connection to nature all my life. My father has been a leader within the movement for over thirty years and has taught most of what I know about environmental conservation. While he would always take me hiking, camping, and rafting, he also taught me that the spiritual value of the outdoors alone is not enough to save nature against economic interests.

Topics: Spiritual, Strong, Father, Strong Connection, Rafting

When I was very small, I had that first-time-you-see-a-play experience, which immediately made me want to act, because it seemed like this incredible outlet for something I was already doing fairly compulsively anyway, which was putting on hats and costumes and doing funny voices. It was a very natural compulsion for me.

Topics: Play, Voice, Want

I think the consensus among our generation and people younger than us is that we do have a defining challenge in the moment, so I do like being involved in something bigger than the finger-doodling I do in art. It stimulates your brain in certain ways.

source: - "Interview: 'Leaves of Grass' Star Edward Norton and Director Tim Blake Nelson". Interview with Landon Palmer, filmschoolrejects.com. March 28, 2010.

Topics: Art, Thinking, Our Generation, Doodling

When you have a pipe salesman with a business called Macabee Pipes, I'd say you've got your tongue planted firmly in your cheek.

source: - "Interview: 'Leaves of Grass' Star Edward Norton and Director Tim Blake Nelson". Interview with Landon Palmer, filmschoolrejects.com. March 28, 2010.

Topics: Tongue, Pipe, Salesman

Remarkably, there's no green screen in 'Leaves of Grass' movie. There is motion control. Technically, there were all sorts of challenges, but really the soul of it is Edward Norton talent. You write these characters when you write a movie, and all you can hope for or depend on is that your actors will elevate the material.

Topics: Character, Writing, Challenges

Any questions I had about whether a redneck from Oklahoma could become a Brown Classical Philosophy professor ended when I met Tim [Blake Nelson].

source: - "Interview: 'Leaves of Grass' Star Edward Norton and Director Tim Blake Nelson". filmschoolrejects.com. March 28, 2010.

Topics: Philosophy, Redneck, Oklahoma

I'm a Tulsa Jew and I have a religious upbringing.

Topics: Religious, Tulsa, Jew

I had a huge advantage with Edward Norton because he's directed a movie before, so one thing he appreciates is how hard my job is, he's very sensitive to that. We actually ended up finishing "Leaves of Grass" a day early.

Topics: Jobs, Appreciate, Leaves Of Grass

With Edward Norton you'd never say, "This is the one we're going with whether you like it or not." It has to be agreed upon.

Topics: You Like It

When I think about directing a film, the thing that stops me short is wondering if I'm a natural at it the way I think you, and PTA, and Fincher are born directors. Maybe some people's talent is in understanding the ways that film communicates, without dialogue, without plot.

source: - Interview with Bennett Miller, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 3, 2014.

Topics: Thinking, People, Understanding, Pta

There's a lot of romanticisation of the intuitive actor and method acting and all kinds of notions about getting inside a character and coming out from there.

source: - Source: www.theguardian.com

Topics: Character, Acting, Actors, Method Acting

Obviously plastics have served very important purposes and been incredibly convenient but as we begin to witness the long-term consequences of the chemical components leaching into our water and our bodies, we're going to be forced to look for alternatives to how we package goods and food.

source: - "Earth Chats: Edward Norton". The Washington Post Live Chat, www.slate.com. April 22, 2008.

Topics: Water, Long, Important, Convenient

I'm pretty busy in my life and I'm very aware of what it takes to direct a movie. It takes a lot out of you; it takes a lot out of the rest of your life, from other people in your life. I don't lie around hungering for that consumption very often.

source: - Interview with Bennett Miller, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 3, 2014.

Topics: Lying, People, Rest Of Your Life, I Don't Lie

See, I don't get the sense that you need to direct at all. Sometimes I get the opposite sensation from you, that you're like, "I really should go do something else." But then you are drawn back in by a particular story, like a hangnail in the brain.

source: - Interview with Bennett Miller, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 3, 2014.

Topics: Opposites, Brain, Needs

I wish I were more musically gifted, more intuitive in playing instruments.

source: - Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Topics: Wish, Playing Instruments, Gifted

I thought Rounders was a comic movie in its way. First time I directed a movie, I wanted to do a comedy. I don't like things that are superficially one thing or another, mainly. My favorite comedies are really smart, too, and have a lot of levels to them as well.

Topics: Smart, Levels, Way, Really Smart

I knew Danny DeVito and he knew me, so he wanted me to try Death to Smoochy. I loved that stuff and had a great time doing it.

source: - "Interview: 'Leaves of Grass' Star Edward Norton and Director Tim Blake Nelson". filmschoolrejects.com. March 28, 2010.

Topics: Trying, Stuff, Had A Great Time

I don't tend to say it's time for one of this or that genre. Things flow to you in a strange way, and why you bump into a certain kind of thing in one moment is...it's hard to explain.

source: - "Interview: 'Leaves of Grass' Star Edward Norton and Director Tim Blake Nelson". Interview with Landon Palmer, filmschoolrejects.com. March 28, 2010.

Topics: Bumps, Way, Flow

You know when somebody really knows what they're drawing from and you can feel it when you see the movie.

source: - "Interview: 'Leaves of Grass' Star Edward Norton and Director Tim Blake Nelson". Interview with Landon Palmer, filmschoolrejects.com. March 28, 2010.

Topics: Drawing, Feels, Knows

You can do things in twin scenes now you couldn't before. You can implement actual moving cameras.

source: - "Interview: 'Leaves of Grass' Star Edward Norton and Director Tim Blake Nelson". filmschoolrejects.com. March 28, 2010.

Topics: Moving, Cameras, Twins

If there's a criteria that really gets me interested in a work besides any type of personal interaction with the theme, it's if I feel like this is the right piece of work for that director at that moment in their career.

source: - "Interview: 'Leaves of Grass' Star Edward Norton and Director Tim Blake Nelson". filmschoolrejects.com. March 28, 2010.

Topics: Careers, Directors, Pieces

When I was about 16 or 17, I had a teacher who took a group of us to the National Theater in Washington, D.C., and I saw Ian McKellen do his one-man show - I think it was called Acting Shakespeare - and it completely bombed me; it put the zap on my brain in a big way.

source: - "It's Edward Norton Day!". Interview with Ingrid Sischy, Interview Magazine, www.interview.de. May, 2006.

Topics: Teacher, Men, Thinking

We must realize that nature is absolutely essential for our survival, and we must act on that premise now.

Topics: Survival, Essentials, Realizing, Premises