Quotes By Edward Norton

I remember as a kid having the offer of a scholarship, that it was going to be like going to Mars, and deciding to stay in my public school.

All people are paradoxical. No one is easily reducible, so I like characters who have contradictory impulses or shades of ambiguity. It's fun, and it's fun because it's hard.

The period western doesn't have a lot to say to most people today.

You never make all things for all people and can't always pander to the broadest denominator. I keep an eye toward doing the themes that interest me. Do they move me? Interest me? Make me think? When I run across something that is provocative in an unsettling way, it appeals to me.

I think we really feel like Crowdrise could be something that, 20 years from now, people take for granted because that's just how you do it, like if you're going to raise money for something, that's how you do it.

My generation is having its midlife crisis in its 20s.

Look, you've got a generation of people coming along who are going to form their own new relationship with the idea of supporting the causes that they care about or changing the world. And these people are not going to do it the way our parents do it.

A lot of why I do something is just the novelty of the experience.

I think a lot of people relate to some of my characters' inner struggles.

I just like working with smart people.

The more you can create that magic bubble, that suspension of disbelief, for a while, the better.

I always felt that acting was an escape, like having the secret key to every door and permission to go into any realm and soak it up. I enjoy that free pass.

The people who work in the scientific field, they need help to convey what it's about.

Identical twins are endemically alike in many ways.

I like making movies for myself and my friends and people with my sensibility.

I've always thought of acting as more of an exercise in empathy, which is not to be confused with sympathy. You're trying to get inside a certain emotional reality or motivational reality and try to figure out what that's about so you can represent it.

Anybody who is running a marathon or doing a walkathon, doing a fundraiser for their school, their company, by far it's guaranteed the easiest and most fun way to quickly set up a fundraising campaign and send it around to your friends and family.

At this point in my life I'm not bent on proving anything, really.

I'm a New Yorker, you know.

Duality is not a story. Duality is just a complexity.

I never think that a film should answer questions for you. I think it should make you ask a lot of questions.

I've always liked the idea of taking old dramatic ideas and devices and making them feel relevant or contemporary or whatever.

Just because you've made a couple movies, you've done some good movies, you've been nominated for some Academy Awards, whatever, nobody's entitled. It's a business. If they don't see it, I can think they're wrong, but I'm not entitled to a $15 million budget to make a film.

No, I'm not a very methodologically pure actor.

Instead of telling the world what you're eating for breakfast, you can use social networking to do something that's meaningful.

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.

Every little thing that people know about you as a person impedes your ability to achieve that kind of terrific suspension of disbelief that happens when an audience goes with an actor and character he's playing.

I'm not particularly precious about the theatrical experience any more.

You know, independent films have been institutionalized, practically. Every studio has got a boutique arthouse label.

People are worried about the degree to which corporate interest is starting to threaten human interest.