Harvey Keitel Quotes

I came to New York in 1962 and it began to look like I might he able to make a living in 1972.

I wouldn't be the actor I am without New York.

It's never easy for an actor who doesn't have connections in the film industry and who has to start from scratch.

In 10 months, I was replaced from three films. That's when I realised I need to take my work seriously. It's a blessing I didn't get things easy. If I had, I wouldn't realise the value of success.

'Spring Day' - I wrote main lyrics based on my personal experience with old friends. It is about my sad memories with him, and it makes me sentimental whenever I listen to the song.

I've had close chances of success, and sometimes politics and people don't work out.

You try to find the romance in the struggle, or at least that's what you keep telling yourself. But you talk to successful actors, and the struggle always is what they miss the most.

Back at the beginning of my career, I had to make all these sacrifices - sleeping in a car on nights where I'd wrestle in front of 20,000 people - because I wasn't making any money.

When I entered Bollywood, I didn't have any advantage over anyone. I didn't know how to act, I was not from the industry, I didn't know the language, and I didn't know how to dance. So, whatever films I was getting, I was just taking them up.

I saved every script I'd ever worked on as an actor.

I've been very lucky that I've interviewed so many different people.

If it were any other way, it would be easy. And if it were any other way, everyone would do it and your work would ultimately be devalued. The yin and yang are clear: without people pushing against your quest to do something worth talking about, it's unlikely it would be worth the journey. Persist.

That's kind of the nature of the profession I'm in. It's frustrating. Things don't go your way, and I was no exception, in that I spent many years struggling to get work, and there are a lot of people more talented than myself who got jobs before me. And I finally, after years and years and years, got lucky.

I would change very little because I have been very, very fortunate. A lot of things fell into place for me simply by happenstance. When that happens you don't really want to change anything, even if you could. Editorially my regrets are few and for the most part minor. I look back on my first published book and think I held on to it too long, babied it too long.

The world has changed a great deal from when I began 50 years ago. I was very fortunate. There were a lot of opportunities that perhaps don't exist today.

I love working, I'd be dead if I hadn't found myself as an actor I didn't have to be successful.

I'm interested in reality, and I'm interested in survival. I'm interested in people who aren't the lucky ones, who maybe have a tougher time surviving, and telling their story.

I've experienced tons of failure. I've been making music for 30 years, and I'd say failure and success have happened in equal measure.

I will never joke about old soldiers who try to get to reunions to talk over the war again. To talk of old times with old friends is the greatest thing in the world.

Know something, sugar? Stories only happen to people who can tell them.

I've seen a lot in my life, and everybody goes down the dark, winding staircase eventually. It's a bad place to be and that's why having good friends is always essential. Those are the people who pull you out.

Early on - certainly in acting - you really have to take whatever you can get. So I understand well how difficult it can be to be in this position where people are just not hearing what you're trying to say or are saying. I recognize that.

Don [ Handfield] was actually one of the first guys I met in town back in '94. He was an actor and a writer and all this stuff.

Christina Baker Kline writes exquisitely about two unlikely friends—one, a 91-year-old survivor of the grinding poverty of rural Ireland, immigrant New York and the hardscrabble Midwest; and the other, a casualty of a string of foster homes—each struggling to transcend a past of isolation and hardship. Orphan Train will hold you in its grip as their fascinating tales unfold.

I've had a lot of failures as well and rejection. As actor, it's actually mostly rejection but people think it's mostly success because they only see your successes - the films that get made.