Christopher Walken quotes: about being boring, refusing to retire, his famous hair, and more.
“We have no way of knowing what lays ahead for us in the future. All we can do is use the information at hand to make the best decision possible.”
“There are people who are able to plan their career, their future, but I’ve never had any talent for that. I just do things and hope for the best. Say yes, take a chance, and sometimes it’s terrific and sometimes it’s not.”
“I suppose in order to succeed at something you have to be very persistent.”
“Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don’t… you’re always hoping for the best.”
“Sometimes a certain innocence is good, but not about yourself.”
“I have this theory about words. There’s a thousand ways to say, ‘Pass the salt.’ It could mean, you know, ‘Can I have some salt?’ or it could mean, ‘I love you.’ It could mean, ‘I’m very annoyed with you.’ Really, the list could go on and on. Words are little bombs, and they have a lot of energy inside them.”
“There’s something dangerous about what’s funny. Jarring and disconcerting. There is a connection between funny and scary.”
“You know, there’s nothing you can do about your public image. It is what it is. I just try to do things honestly. I guess honesty is what you would call subjective: if you feel good about what you’re doing, yourself – if you figure you’re doing the right thing.”
“You hear about things happening to people – they slip in the bathtub, fall down the stairs, step off the curb in London… because they think that the cars come the other way – and they die. You feel you want to die making an effort at something; you don’t want to die in some unnecessary way.”
“I’m not sure with technology now that people are reading books that often. That’s too bad because a book – you open it up and put it in your lap. There’s something about sitting in a chair and reading a good writer. It helps you organize your thoughts.”
“I like to cook. Cooking, like a lot of things, has to do with the ingredients. Then you throw timing into that. You can ruin a piece of fish by cooking it too long. There comes a time, if you do it long enough, you can almost look at something and know when it’s done. A doctor I know said a person is like a fruit or vegetable. You look at it and see what the color is, give it a little squeeze, and you can tell if it’s sick or not. It makes a lot of sense.”
“I don’t need to be made to look evil. I can do that on my own.”
“My hair was famous before I was.”
“Emotional power is maybe the most valuable thing that an actor can have.”
“If I show somebody something that I’ve written and they say, ‘Eh… alright,’ I just put it away and I never show it to anyone again. But I know people who won’t take no for an answer, and eventually someone pays attention.”
“I’m a character actor. I have to find work in good movies where I can make something of my role. I’m a very lucky guy to be in that kind of position. It’s like a kid who dreams of becoming a baseball player and then he gets to play for the Yankees.”
“A job leads to a job, just like anything else, and it became apparent that this was probably what I was going to keep doing.”
“If you’re an actor, like I said, a hard thing is to stick around, to stay viable. I try to do that by taking the opportunity to do something different every once in awhile.”
“I do like to work. Some jobs are better than others. That’s the thing: you really don’t know. I’ve enjoyed making movies for lots of different reasons. Sometimes, it was the other people. Sometimes, it was the fact that I was really good in it. Sometimes, it was the location. Sometimes, it was the paycheck.”
“I’ve been very fortunate, because I’ve been involved in things that very often lead to obscurity. I was in some pictures that were not successful whatsoever. I think people admire persistence. People notice that I’m still there.”
“My father was a lesson. I approach my work like my father did. My father was one of the hardest-working people I’ve ever met. He had his own bakery, and it was closed one day a week, but he would go anyway. He did it because he really loved his bakery. It wasn’t a job.”
“My own way of thinking is very conservative, very linear and not particularly imaginative, but if I look for things in different places, sometimes things happen.”
“I don’t carry lucky charms, but I believe in those things.”
“My life is really quite conservative. I’ve been married nearly 50 years. I don’t have hobbies or children. I don’t much care to travel. I’ve never had a big social life. I really just stay home, except when I go to work.”
“I live in a nice house, my grass is always cut, I pay my bills, and my cat loves me!”
“I don’t want to be retired, because what would I do? Charles Grodin is my neighbor in Connecticut, and I think he’s written seven books. I can’t do that, so I need to keep acting.”
“I live in a nice place in the country. I read. I do those things that actors do. A lot of actors write. A lot of actors paint. I do all that. But it’s really just for myself. It’s not good enough to show anybody. A lot of actors play tennis and golf and they travel. They race cars and all that. I’ve never done anything like that. I don’t play any sports. I don’t particularly like to travel. So going to work is really the most fun thing for me.”
“So going to work is pretty important because as an actor, you can get a job and it can be your last job. Actors don’t retire – they get retired.”
“Death is wonderful because you can’t think about it. How are you gonna think about it?”
“At its best, life is completely unpredictable.”
“My life has been wonderful. Everybody has to be a little lucky, I think.”
“I think any reasonable human being has no choice but to be humble. If you’re a sensible human being, you have no choice but to thank God that it’s working out so far.”
