River Phoenix Quotes

No one in Switzerland knows me as the Swiss Machine, and that's good, because I don't like it.

In my show I announce, 'People say Lady Gaga is a lie, and they are right. I am a lie. And every day I kill to make it true.'

Nobody can hide their birthdays anymore, so there's no point in lying.

I just want to be known for things other than my sexuality.

I try to lie as much as I can when I'm interviewed. It's reverse psychology. I figure if you lie, they'll print the truth.

I want people to believe me when I play a part and they are less apt to if they know a lot about me and have associations about me.

I don't live a lie. You have to understand that people who choose not to discuss their personal lives are not living a lie. That is a presumption that people jump to.

A man had rather a hundred lies told of him than one truth which he does not wish to be told.

I didn't feel ever that people needed to know who I was.

We feel that to reveal embarrassing or private things, we have given someone something, that, like a primitive person fearing that a photographer will steal his soul, we identify our secrets, our past and their blotches, with our identity, that revealing our habits or losses or deeds somehow makes one less of oneself.

I am who I am, you are who you are, and everything else is a perception based on acceptance, deception, smoke, mirrors, and so on. It's what's between us that seems to justify our accidental identities.

I am not a glam woman - this definitely is a mask I put on for the public.

Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth while pretending to be other people. They often reveal much about themselves in a very straightforward way. I am certain that I did. There is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself.

Only the right name gives beings and things their reality. A wrong name makes everything unreal. That's what lies do.

Reputations are maintained by the outside world, and they're created by it, too, by and large. And they serve as a hell of a device for privacy, because the more people look for something that's not there, the less chance they have of violating who you are. It's like going out there with a mask on, without having to exercise your upper body to put it on.

My assumption is I'm not going to be recognized. But when I am, I'm like, "Dang, you know who I am?" I always think I look so different.

This is what forty looks like. We've been lying so long, who would know?

Not one of us can lie or pretend. We're all fixed in good faith in a certain concept of ourselves.

My name sounds French but that's just a stage name.

I'm really no different than anybody else; except that sometimes I get my name in the paper.

As a kid, in the Runaways, I would see the interviewers start to ask about our personal lives and what we did — and I could see the look in their eyes. They were practically frothing at the mouth. So if I answered these questions, I knew they were never gonna talk about the music. It was like that instinct — don’t go there, man. Have boundaries. Have mystery. You don’t have to let everybody in! I want to be singing to everybody, and I want everybody to think that I’m singing to them. Guys, girls and everyone in between.

A liar goes in fine clothes, a liar goes in rags, a liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes.

Ask no questions and you'll hear no lies.