Daniel Radcliffe Quotes

As a son of a man who pretended to be one thing for 33 years of my life and then was another thing, the questions of 'what is real' and 'what is not real' are very blurrily vivid to me.

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 think the fact that I look totally artificial, but I am totally real, has its own kind of magic in it.

I know a lot of people think, 'She's so glamorous.' But that's really not me at all.

I knew there was something special about the theater for me something beyond the regular reality, something that I could get into and transcend and become something other than myself.

Marilyn Monroe wasn't even her real name, Charles Manson isn't his real name, and now, I'm taking that to be my real name. But what's real? You can't find the truth, you just pick the lie you like the best.

Once you look past the hype, actors are nothing more than fugitives from reality who specialize in contradiction: we are both children and hardened adults—wide-eyed pupils and jaded working stiffs.

We swim, day by day, on a river of delusions, and are effectually amused with houses and towns in the air, of which the men aboutus are dupes. But life is a sincerity.

Seeming and being are not one and the same.

Because it's kind of great, being an idea that everybody likes. But I could never be the idea to myself, not all the way. And Agloe is a place where a paper creation became real. A dot on the map became a real place, more real than the people who created the dot could never have imagined. I thought maybe the paper cutout of a girl could start becoming real here also. And it seemed like a way to tell that paper girl who cared about popularity and clothes and everything else: 'You are going to the paper towns. And you are never coming back.

Like an actor who transforms into the character that they're playing, you can transform into yourself.

Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Chuang Chou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakeable Chuang Chou. But he didn't know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou.

Human beings are, necessarily, actors who...can be divided...into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.

I used to believe that if I could do certain things - write a book or be a successful musician - that I'd be transformed into a happy person, but it doesn't work that way.

Dandyism is a lie which reveals the truth, and the truth is that we are what we pretend to be.

One goes on with the blithe belief that who you really are is transparent to everybody. Then you realise, with some horror, that in fact it's not. So all you can do is keep muddying the waters a bit.

I believe your thoughts are your thoughts, but are you a human being in front of the camera, or an actor? They are two different things.

Image is what people perceive my life to be. It's nothing like the truth.

I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.

I choose roles that are not me.

We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.

I wanted to imbue Ziggy with real flesh and blood and muscle, and it was imperative that I find Ziggy and be him.

We are not what we seem. We are more than what we seem. The actor knows that. And because the actor knows that hidden inside himself there's a wizard and a king, he also knows that when he's playing himself in his daily life, he's playing a part, he's performing, just as he's performing when he plays a part on stage.

To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another.

I'm nothing more than what you actually see, but I am also the complete opposite.