I had to decide if I wanted to be a singer or an actor. I was always singing. I thought if I could be an actor, I could do all of it.
— Harry Dean Stanton
To put it mildly, I was just a very late bloomer.
Do nothing. Do nothing. Let it happen. Don't try.
Fame in itself is, you know... It involves a whole discussion on just that word, 'fame.' It's a power; it's another degree of power, to be famous. I think it's obvious: you have more influence the more well-known you are. And, hopefully, it's righteously used.
I do the same series of five exercises 21 times each day - an ancient Tibetan practice that stimulates your chakras.
I could have been a lot more famous and played leading men and everything. For whatever reason, I didn't go for it.
I have nothing to do with anything that happens to me.
What did we play in the Harry Dean Stanton Band? It was old blues and country - all covers. I never wrote anything.
I'd love to meet Gandhi. And Christ. I'm sure he'd be interesting. And a lot different than a lot of people would think.
You can do stuff onstage that you can't do offstage. You can be angry as hell and enraged and get away with it onstage, but not off.
I was singing the blues when I was six. Kind of sad, eh?
Nothing is important.
I used to sing when I was six years old. When the family would leave the house, I'd get up on the stool and sing. 'T for Texas, T for Tenessee, T for Thelma, the gal that made a wreck out of me.' I was in love with my babysitter. She was 18. I was six.
I worked with the best directors - Martin Scorsese, John Huston, David Lynch, Alfred Hitchcock. Alfred Hitchcock was great.
I don't blame anyone but myself for the kind of parts I got. To blame external circumstances is absolute folly.
Sam Shepard is a brilliant writer.
I've had offers that could've made me much richer and much more famous than I am.
I could have been a writer.
It's just so frustrating when you're in a supporting role because you only get to express a part of yourself.
I liked 'Repo Man.' Satire.
I sang barber shop harmony and sort of got into performing. And it just came naturally. Then, when I was in college after the war, I did a play, 'Pygmalion,' by George Bernard Shaw. And from then on, I knew that's what I wanted to do.
Molly Ringwald, she's a natural talent. Every girl in this country related to that girl.
I had opportunities to be a lot more successful, but for some reason or other - the way I was particularly genetically wired - I turned down a lot of opportunities.
I was trained on the stage, and I can do stage as well as I can do movies, but I prefer films.
I think any performing artist can do films, or, as a matter of fact, anybody out there in the street can be a film actor with no experience whatsoever if you've got a good director.
A friend is somebody who doesn't lie.
I've worked with some of the best of them. Not just directors like Sam Peckinpah and David Lynch, but writers like Sam Shepard and singers like Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson.
Singing and acting are actually very similar things. Anyone can sing and anyone can be a film actor. All you have to do is learn.
My favorite films are 'Paris, Texas' and 'Repo Man.'
The soul is an illusion.
'Paris, Texas' gave me a chance to play compassion, and I'm spelling that with a capital C.
I never liked being ordered around - which, of course, was an overreaction. I eventually found out that I didn't mind being ordered around at all when it was by someone who knew what he was doing.
Silence is the most powerful state.
I am an actor and this is holding the mirror up to nature, as it were.
I know I've got the ability to bring a sense of menace to the screen. I have that specific competence, and it's generally kept me working.
I like to watch 'Paris, Texas,' but I have no desire to see it. I did it.
I've avoided success artfully.
I was in the Pacific. The Pacific Theater, as they say.
I was offered a series by John Carpenter after I did the movie 'Christine,' and I would've been a leading man after that. I would have played a private investigator. And I was offered a great deal - I would be involved in the direction, casting, everything, and whatever. It was whatever an actor wants, and I didn't take it.
Everything changes every day.
The first film I ever remember - I think my mother took me to it - was called 'She Married Her Boss' with Melvyn Douglas.
The void, the concept of nothingness, is terrifying to most people on the planet. And I get anxiety attacks myself. I know the fear of that void. You have to learn to die before you die. You give up, surrender to the void, to nothingness.
When man began to think he was a separate person with a separate soul, it created a violent situation.
I could have made it as a singer, but I went with acting - surrendered to it, in a way.
Every actor is a character actor.
I've had chances to record albums, which I haven't done.
I always had a dramatic flair. I'd like to dress up like a cowboy, play make-believe. But I didn't realize acting was something I had to do until I got to college.
I hated being typecast in those roles. It was personally limiting, only playing stereotyped heavies. But I got those roles because I was angry, because that's what I projected. I was angry at my mother and father because they didn't get along, angry at the church. On top of that, I had an extreme lack of self-confidence.
I made it a point not to graduate. I thought that was a positive, independent kind of statement.
I've passed up opportunities. I've avoided the spotlight. I've never been to Academy Awards, didn't relate to them.
