Edward Norton Quotes

When I was five, I think, that's when I started wanting to be an actress. I loved to play. I didn't like the world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house. It was like you could make your own boundaries.

To be able to pretend to be something that I'm frankly not is very liberating and exciting.

When you sit at your desk, if you're lucky, there's a moment when you feel empowered to be someone or something else, to leap into another skin.

I don't have any office; I can write everywhere. So, I put a piece of paper on the table, and then I travel. Literally, writing for me is like travelling. It's getting out of myself and living another life - maybe a better life.

The lead of a film that wove around me, I played all the roles. I traveled the world; I loved life, pleasure. I adored to write, create.

Acting lets you be in a place where no one's judging you.

I have a good time when I'm acting, and bottom line, I just want to enjoy myself and be a happy person, and acting makes me happy. I enjoy it, and it's a good way to escape yourself. You just become somebody else for a little bit, and it's a lot of fun.

One travels to run away from routine, that dreadful routine that kills all imagination and all our capacity for enthusiasm.

I love escaping into character. It's a chance to try on people that you wouldn't be brave or stupid enough to be in real life.

I think that playing characters far away from who I am as a person is a lot more fun and a lot more exciting, and you can play with it a lot more because it's not you and it's so far from you, so that's very liberating as far as that goes.

I really enjoy writing novels. It's like the ocean. You can just build a boat and take off.

Acting offers me an outlet. Here is the perfect opportunity to spend fleeting moments becoming an entirely different person; to experience a character entirely unlike myself, but to also make such a character a part of me. There is no routine here; there is no boredom.

It's what still excites me most about acting: letting your imagination go places it's never been before. There's nothing better than that.

A really fun part of getting to be an actor is exploring those parts of yourself that you wouldn't otherwise explore.

That's one of the really cool things about being an actor. You get to explore all different parts of yourself.

'Meenaxi' was a lesson in liberation. It taught me to be a free spirit and understand the pleasure of my work by being different people, just like Meenaxi is.

As you enter the world of myth, you have immediately a wonderful freedom.

I like the fact that I can go away and lose myself so I don't have to live in the world of courage that everyone else does. I like creating, it's what I do, and acting allows me to stretch all those different muscles in all kinds of ways. That's pretty cool.

I don't ever want to be bored, doing the same thing from 9 to 5. I've always loved pretending and being someone different.

Trying different things is very important to me. I see people and want to wear their clothes and drive in their cars for awhile. That's probably one reason I became an actor.

'Birdman' came from a very beautiful side of me, from a part of honesty and surrender about things.

I love acting because it's a bit of an escape. It gives you the ability to reinvent yourself. They say that acting is the shy man's revenge.

I don't think art is propaganda; it should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further. It celebrates humanity instead of manipulating it.

Dare to err and to dream. Deep meaning often lies in childish plays.

When you're a little kid, you are small, your life is small - and you're terrifically aware of that. But when you read, you can ride Arabian horses across the desert, you can be a dogsledder.