Steve Buscemi Quotes

I always had a dramatic flair. I'd like to dress up like a cowboy, play make-believe. But I didn't realize acting was something I had to do until I got to college.

All of my puppets have their own personalities, their own background, and they enjoy what they do. How they say things, sing things, how they talk. I kind of created them out of my own personality. They are all me.

I was kind of an outsider growing up, and I preferred reading to being with other kids. When I was about seven, I started to write my own books. I never thought of myself as wanting to be a writer - I just was one.

I think we're all blessed with gifts and I was lucky I just found out what mine was early on and have planted that seed and tried to water it every day.

I feel I have to work hard to nurture whatever talent I have as an actor. I feel like it's not natural to me. So I don't take it for granted... What I think is my natural ability - which is writing - I think I totally take that for granted.

Acting is one of those things that anybody can do because no one can learn it, but only a few people can really do because it's nothing you can learn.

I saw things at an early age because my mom was a theater actress. I did a play with her when I was 10 years old.

One of the things I like about acting is that, in a funny way, I come back to myself.

I think the beautiful thing about acting is you don't really know who you are. You're able to be whatever you want any day during the week. So I really couldn't see myself being anything else.

Up until college age I was using the typical little-boy dummy that sits on the knee and makes woodpecker jokes. My first original character didn't happen until later, and that was Jose the Jalapeno on a Stick.

I was really shy when I was younger, so my mom got me into an acting class to see if I would open myself up more in front of an audience. Her plan was for me to just talk more.

I actually used to make these little plays. I would stand there, and I would act out where I was dying or something. I would make them sit there and watch all my plays. I would be talking in gibberish language, like I was talking in a different language, and my parents would be like, 'Oh that was great!' and I'd be like, 'Wait, it's not done!'

One of the pleasures of being an actor is quite simply taking a walk in someone else's shoes. And when I look at the roles I've played, I'm kind of amazed at all the wonderful adventures I've had and the different things I've learned.

I believe acting to be my own journey through connection more than anything else, but that's only my take on it.

Puppet camp truly redefined my preconceptions of puppetry... I'll never forget learning that before a puppet can speak... he has to inhale. It's those details that make the characters truly come to life.

My father leaving the family shaped who I was and how I looked at the world. By the same token, my father telling me fairy tales that he had made up shaped me profoundly, too.

I don't think I would ever have been able to be an actress had I not started at nine years old.

I kind of stumbled into acting, even though I've always been fascinated by people and kind of their motives, and it's been amazing to me, everything I read before about psychology, philosophy, just to put it into practice somehow.

There was always a piano in the house when I was growing up - my dad played, and I thought it was cool - and when I was eight, I begged my parents to let me have lessons. After a couple of weeks, I wanted to give up, but my parents were very focused and made me keep going, which I'm very pleased about now.

Through writing, through that process, they realize that they become more intelligent, and more honest and more imaginative than they can be in any other part of their life.

The interesting thing about acting is using all your own stuff and having some kind of personal catharsis while you're working.

Doing animation is closer to pretending than anything else you get to do. It's much more like when you're a kid putting on a character.

To be perfectly honest with you, having a mother as an actress - who I watched struggle tremendously during my childhood - and to watch fluctuations of ups and downs is difficult. She did mainly television, so I think I associated that with a life of inconsistency. As I've come into my own, I realize it has nothing to do with the medium.

I'd had an early stint in acting school, and there was something satisfying about becoming a character, about being inside another mind that you had to create out of yourself. As I moved toward a life in writing, I found many of the things I'd learned in acting school still applied.

My parents sent me to a dance class, so it was a road chosen by them, not me. But I enjoyed it so much I knew I would become a performer.