Quotes from Dustin Hoffman

One of the things you can do as an actor, is compensate for the things you can't do in life.

There's too many interesting women I have…not had the experience to know in this life because I have been brainwashed.

Life stinks, but that doesn't mean you don't enjoy it.

Life is an occasion...rise to it.

It's very painful for us to feel we deserve a life. That's the toughest thing. That we deserve to have a life. That can take a lifetime.

I like to mimic my grandkids. I'm trying to understand the intensity of fixation on a leaf. Kids don't need anything else in their life.

God knows I've done enough crap in my life to grow a few flowers.

I envy people who can just look at a sunset. I wonder how you can shoot it. There is nothing more grotesque to me than a vacation.

If there is no direct threat why are we invading?

I decided a long time ago but sometimes it takes you 40 years to get around to doing something - and that's the truthful answer.

A "take" is an opportunity to fail ... and we think that we have to get it right all the time.

There's a rebirth that goes on with us continuously as human beings. I don't understand, personally, how you can be bored. I can understand how you can be depressed, but I just don't understand boredom.

What makes divorce happen is that you can't be in the same space any more, for whatever reason - but the love stays. And that's the killer. That's where the vehemence and anger and rage comes from.

I love acting, and I'm not going to determine what I do based on what I fear other people might think. I do what I want to do.

And that's another reason to make this movie: We can put plays on film now, at a relatively small cost, and they will reach an audience they would never have reached otherwise.

We need to band together as a unit every day, especially to conquer the strength of the AIDS virus.

So when I told my parents I wanted to go into acting because I was flunking out of my first year of junior college, they were relieved that I had picked something other than joining the army. But I can't imagine how they had high hopes for me.

I think the most insulting thing you can do to a director is to challenge when he or she is satisfied with your interpretation.

There's nothing that I love more than predawn. I'm with the dogs, I make coffee, and there's no one up.

I stopped working a few years ago because I just lost a spark that I'd had before. I thought I'd just try writing, and maybe start directing, but I did it very quietly.

Many actors want to play Hamlet and Macbeth. Ever since I became an actor, from the very beginning I just wanted to play a Shetland pony. I cannot explain why

I love working, I'd be dead if I hadn't found myself as an actor I didn't have to be successful.

In my room as a kid... I'd play a fighter and get knocked to the floor and come back to win.

Now, I'm simply working with people I want to work with. I just want to have good working experiences and let the dice fall where they may.