Josh Brolin Quotes

I don't know if I'd say I feel green, but I'm getting to know myself as an actor now in a way that I never did as a kid.

When I lived in New York City, I loved it so much. But every six months, I had to go home to Texas to remember who I was. Get filled back up.

Back in the 1990s, I had an opportunity to make a film. But I realized that it is better for me to go in stages so I could explore myself as an actor and in the process I started writing scripts.

When I started soul-searching, I tapped into the old me and what I grew up around. I learned a lot about myself, and it really made me appreciate my upbringing.

I think I was about 16 when I first figured I wanted to be an actor. I wanted to be a fighter pilot before that, but then I thought I don't want to kill people so that ruled that out.

I think that initially all I wanted to do was work as an actress, and then, as I started to work more consistently, you start to maybe want to challenge yourself in different ways, so I think it's something that developed over time - this desire to direct and also to produce. I think as you watch other actresses do it so successfully and so gracefully, you're like, I think that would be fun! It's definitely something that has become more of a priority for me.

You can physically move yourself around but there's that great line that Adam wrote: "Does it define for life, like print of thumb?" I think it does.

I have the ability, occasionally, of being able to step out and see who you think I could end up being. And I like to play with that.

I'm moving - as a person and as a writer - through time. I'm a different age. I'm thinking about different things. I have different life experiences. I'm trying to get closer to being honest. And by closer I mean that at different ages I have different ideas of what the truth is, and at any point I'm trying to express that at that moment in time.

I turned 30 and everyone told me I would feel different and I didn't. So I thought I'd move to New York.

I left the Midwest thinking I didn't fit in. But when I got to New York, I realized how truly Midwestern I was.

I did not think I had what it took to be an actor, because most of the actors that I encountered were people who were very narcissistic and I thought since I lacked narcissism to become an actor because that's what it took. It was more of a social experiment for me to walk in the shoes of other people that I found interesting.

I finally feel like I'm becoming somebody. I really think like I can do something. I just know I'm going to be an actress. I want it so bad.

It's nice to be able to be whoever you want to be. I moved to New York for that reason. I think I am a very good example of how you really can do whatever you want to do without having any kind of prerequisite experience of any of kind of connection. None of my family members came from this world.

I think it is very useful to know ourselves, but when we start naming and labeling, that is dangerous, that gets problematic. It negates that things are always changing. Besides, it's hard to pin a label onto something that's always moving.

We were taught to be free-thinking, independent, to look at your goals. And that old saying, you could never go home was never true in my community. We always felt like we could go home.

Self-knowledge is not the knowledge of a dead self, self-knowledge is the knowledge of the process of the self. It is an alive phenomenon. The self is not a thing, it is an event, it is a process. Never think in terms of things, the self is not there inside you just like a thing waiting in your room. The self is a process: changing, moving, arriving at new altitudes, moving into new planes, going deeper into new depths. Each moment much work is going on and the only way to encounter this self is to encounter it in relationship.

I think I got into acting because I kind of had not much else to do! I guess I was kind of looking for something challenging. I heard about the London Theater scene and it was very different from the upbringing that I had and it felt like a challenge. And the whole sort of London Theater schools, I was told that 6,000 apply and there are like 30 accepted to each one. I was like, "Yeah. Let's see if we can do that!"

I want you to show them the difference between what they think you are and what you can be.

Knowing what you admire in others is a wonderful mirror into your deepest, as yet unborn, self.

Everything that you know about yourself comes from thinking back, and I think I saw religion as the first big betrayal of me.

I still don't know what it really means to grow up. However, if I happen to meet you, one day in the future, by then, I want to become someone you can be proud to know.

I think I've developed into an actress because I've worked darn hard at it and I've learned a great deal from a lot of gifted people. And if I have nothing else to show for my life, apart from a scrapbook full of cuttings, I have the knowledge that my early days in Hollywood weren't in vain.

Really I think I like who I'm becomin.. There's times where I might do it just to do it like it's nothin. It's times where I might blow like 50k on a vacation for all my soldiers just to see the looks on all their faces, all it took was patience

I am a strong believer that as one moves toward the future, the strongest and clearest way to do it is if you have a good sense of your past. You cannot have a very tall tree without deep roots.