Michael Richards Quotes

The bigger confrontation is the one an individual has with itself.

'Crash' came from personal experience. I saw things inside me from living in L.A. that made me uncomfortable. I saw horrible things in people and saw terrible things in myself. I saw a black director completely humiliated, but the three people around me just thought it was funny. 'No,' I said, 'that is selling your soul.'

I'm a horrible person. And it's just coming out in my work.

I close my eyes and I take a deep breath and I think about my life and how I ended up this way. I think about the ruin, devastation and wreckage I have caused to myself and to others. I think about self-hatred and self-loathing. I think about how and why and what happened and the thoughts come easily, but the answers don't.

The only history is a mere question of one's struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.

Some of the greatest battles will be fought within the silent chambers of your own soul.

One ever feels his twoness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself - the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us - that's where it's at.

I became conflicted in my late teens.

I've always been at war with myself, for right or wrong.

Every man is crucified upon the cross of himself.

The best characters to play are the ones who have deep internal conflict.

The literature of the inner life is very largely a record of struggle with the inordinate passions of the social self.

I am a spy in the house of me. I report back from the front lines of the battle that is me. I am somewhat nonplused by the event that is my life.

The process of getting conscious, for me, was a very, very uncomfortable, disturbing, and sometimes physically painful process. And so that's the standard to which I write, because it was what I've experienced over my time.

I enjoy playing characters who are struggling, particularly with themselves.

Everyone has monsters and demons within themselves. They're metaphors for the human condition.

A black person grows up in this country - and in many places - knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone.

College was where I got to actually experience the difference between black and white.

I think everybody's gone through some racist moment in their life.

I'm very light, so some people don't really know that I'm black. I've been in situations where people will say something kind of racist, and I'll step in, and they'll be like, 'Oh, well, you're light.' That still doesn't cut it, buddy.

I'm not a racist, but I do have to work at not being a racist, because of where I grew up.

I have never met a man who has given me as much trouble as myself.

Ten thousand million nightmares, temptation by the score, I used to get so high, and still I wanted more. You think my time is wasted in search of who I am, I tried so hard to kill the boy inside the man.

Sometimes you think the whole world is falling, and it's only yourself that's leaning.