John C. Reilly Quotes

It's kind of hard to enjoy the film when you are watching yourself the whole time. But you do get on with it and try and appreciate everything else about the movie. At least that's what I do. It depends on how fresh in my memory the whole experience is.

To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory's vault and mix in a sad memory from one's own life.

When I watch a movie, I don't want to see the extra bits.

'Swingers' was a little closer to what my real experience was. 'Crazy Eyes,' whoever's experience that is, I'm telling you what, that was one heck of a ride.

A lot of times when I'm performing a song, it tends to take me back to where I was psychologically as the lyric was being written.

When we were shooting the movie, and of course in the editing room we had to make choices, but the shots fall almost exactly where we thought they would. They're not about content; they're never meant to be about what just happened. There's that weird phenomenon where the more you like a movie the more your mind wanders and goes all over the place.

Poems give you the lives of others and then circle in on your own inner world.

I'd liked my first record, it was autobiographical and beautiful.

We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner; must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly.

I love movies and I love to watch movies and being a part of the whole film experience. Being a filmgoer is a unique experience, and it can affect you on so many levels. But being an actor in movies you often have a very narrow palette for expressing yourself.

My first cut was three hours and 17 minutes. And then I just became very shrewd about the editing.

For me [in my stand-ups] I do what is from the heart. I do what I relate to, what I can talk about, things that I can define. I don't try to talk about things just because they might be a popular subject. I talk about things I know about.

I relate to those characters - and any character I play - in as much as I put myself in their positions and feel how I would personally deal with their experiences.

Once I'm in the editing room, forget about what I intended to shoot. I take a cold, hard look at what I really did shoot, and then I edit that because, if you try to edit what you intended and you missed somewhere, that will show up.

Weirdly enough, I don't like to pretend. I try to use things in me, and translate them into the situation and the characters, so it always needs to run through my own veins.

Usually, when I act, I try to forget the words and let them come, and just find my way through them.

Students want to know, "Are you painting by the numbers, or are you really present as a human being to what you are doing; and is it coming from inside of you?" So I would ask teachers this question: "Do you have a wellgrounded personal experience and conviction concerning whatever it is you are trying to teach?"

Roman Polanski actually said as much to me once. He had his head in his hands, and I said, "Roman, I've got to tell you, as an actor, seeing the director with his head in his hands... Look, I really want to do what you want me to do." And he went away and he came back, having obviously thought about what I said. And he said, "When my head is in my hands, I'm closing my eyes and trying to remember what I saw in my head, before any of the stuff."

There's a paradox in rereading. You read the first time for rediscovery: an encounter with the confirming emotions. But you reread for discovery: you go to the known to figure out the workings of the unknown, the why of the familiar how.

In my entire career, I've never cried, consistently, through a movie, ever.

When I look back at my paintings, they don't give me a sense of where I was when I first met that guy. They don't give me a sense of what I felt like when I first saw that original source material. They give me a sense of the world that I'm trying to create. And we all just have to deal with that.

I like that feeling in your brain when you've got seven things that you're holding in one moment-you heard that person cough, you heard that person laugh, you're also saying your line, you're also listening to the person who's talking to you.

There's me in every character I put on the pages.

I think, we can only write very personal matters through our experience. When I named my first novel about my son "A Personal Matter," I believe I knew the most important thing: there is not any personal matter; we must find the link between ourselves, our "personal matter," and society.

As an actor, I look at first what I can borrow from what I really feel.