Quotes By Alan Alda

It's not an epitaph. I felt I could look back at my life and get a good story out of it. It's a picture of somebody trying to figure things out. I'm not trying to create some impression about myself. That doesn't interest me.

If I can't get the girl, at least give me more money.

No, I never thought about my image. It interests me that there are people who do, that they seem to be methodical about it.

I'm an angry person, angrier than most people would imagine, I get flashes of anger. What works for me is working out when it's useful to use that anger.

As an artist, as an actor, as a writer, you have to use what's personal to you. You have to be personal about your work; otherwise, it doesn't ring true.

It makes it fun. When an actor plays a character, you want what that character wants. Otherwise it doesn't look authentic. So I really want to defeat Jimmy - I mean Jimmy as the character.

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is really advice to myself, a reminder to myself not to avoid change or uncertainty, but to go with it, to surf into change.

I've never tried to manipulate my image.

It's really clear to me that you can't hang onto something longer than its time. Ideas lose certain freshness, ideas have a shelf life, and sometimes they have to be replaced by other ideas.

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself.

Really top-notch directors, I've often worked with them just to see how they work.

And I think belief is one of those things that comes to people in their own way. And just because I believe in something doesn't mean I think that you should.

The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.

My mother didn't try to stab my father until I was six, but she must have shown signs of oddness before that.

I found I wasn't asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something. I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn't know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen.

I find myself going to places where I really have no business, speaking to these people in a whole other field that I have no extensive knowledge of. But I do it very often because it scares me.

What I always wanted to get seen as was as a good actor, when it was the acting I was doing. When I'm writing, I want to try to be seen as a good writer.

I've been nominated twice before as actor in a leading part. Now I'm nominated as actor in a supporting part. If I don't win, I'll just wait until I'm nominated for being in the theater during the show. Do they have one like that?

Almost everybody that's well-known gets tagged with a nickname.

I'm in the real world, some people try to steal from me, and I stop them, frequently, take them to court. I love a good lawsuit. It's fun.

I'm most at home on the stage. I was carried onstage for the first time when I was six months old.

I wouldn't live in California. All that sun makes you sterile.

Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don't leave any of yourself safely on shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.

No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle and good, without the world being better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness.

It isn't necessary to be rich and famous to be happy. It's only necessary to be rich.

Be fair with others, but then keep after them until they're fair with you.

I was always interested in figuring things out. I'd do experiments, like combining things I found around the house to see what would happen if I put them together.

You wouldn't want to be called a sell-out by selling a product. Selling out was frowned on, whereas now you can major in it at business school.

Kids are natural scientists.

Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.