Ian Mckellen Quotes

I was in New Zealand and met this girl. Her sister dared me to bungee jump, so I did! It was a spur-of-the-moment decision - I wanted to impress the girl, and it worked! We were in a relationship after that.

We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty and charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open. So many people seem to go about their life's business with their eyes shut. Indeed, they object to other people keeping their eyes open. Unable to play themselves, they dislike the play of others.

Consciousness is always open to many possibilities because it involves play. It is always an adventure.

If we can only live once, let it be a daring adventure.

To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea 'cruising' it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.

Learning to play two pairs is worth about as much as a college education, and about as costly.

The fact is that I like thrillers and action movies. But what really fulfills me is getting out of my comfort zone, taking chances.

The need to eat, sleep and dry out plays havoc with your sense of wonder.

How much do they be paying you?" he asked mellowly. "The usual salary. A little more than they think I'm worth and a little less than I think I'm worth.

Science, freedom, beauty, adventure: what more could you ask of life?

Any time you get a chance to play a great role, I consider all the qualities I may or may not have attributed to that character and how I would fit into the story.

I honestly believe, and I've said it many times, that the universal stems from the specific and I can't walk around with a performance and ask everyone how they feel about it, but if noble is an opinion that people have I'll accept that. I've been asked many times why I don't play bad guys, or heavies, and I would do it, absolutely, in a second, just haven't been offered any so... if anybody has a script out there tonight I'm more than willing.

For me, writing stories set, well, wherever they're best set, is a form of cultural curiosity that is uniquely Scottish - we're famous for travelling in search of adventure.

I had this aunt who had a career and traveled. She'd say things like, "When you go to college, I think we should go scuba diving in the summer. The scuba diving in Portugal is fabulous." And I'd be like, "Portugal! Holy cats!".

The devotion of the greatest is to encounter risk and danger, and play dice for death.

It's great to be able to play the bad guy role because you always get a lot to do, but I'm always looking at the why. How does a person get to that particular point? It's those little cogs in the wheel that make it interesting for me to play. Ultimately, I hope for the audience to be engaged with it because it is going to take a turn.

Everybody needs adventure, and everybody needs something to enlarge his or her lives.

I suppose that the main drive is to find the edge of something and then throw myself over it.

As an actor - like an artist - you have to ask, "Why do I choose a certain moment to play something a certain way?" It's organic to who we are.

Once I decide to take on a role it's because I find that guy to be really interesting to watch and very compelling to play. And from that point on I can no longer judge him. I can only take on his point of view in order to play him effectively. And his point of view is often not mine.

Once the travel bug bites there is no known antidote, and I know that I shall be happily infected until the end of my life

As a kid, when I got to the edge of a cliff I wanted to jump off. I didn't want to kill myself. I wanted to fly.

True wilderness is where you keep it, and real wilderness experience cannot be a sedentary one; you have to seek it out not seated, but afoot.

He who climbeth on the highest mountains, laugheth at all tragic plays and tragic realities.

I wanted real adventures to happen to myself. But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.