Vilhjalmur Stefansson Quotes

Personally, of course it's exasperating when people think you're just swanning around in Europe, going to the occasional fashion show and then being glamorous at a party.

I just have that sort of face and when I got to Hollywood in the late '70s they took one look at me and said, 'Get him a gun. You definitely should be carrying a gun,' and so a lot of it is just the way I look. I look like I'm angry and dangerous, and in fact, I'm loveable and kind.

I would do the baby voice and it's kind of like this character I made up. But in real life, I'm completely different. I'm very smart. I think a lot of people will assume I'm an airhead.

The thing that I come across is that people think that I might actually be super aggressive, want-to-fight type in real life. The irony is that that's just not true, at all.

You know how it always is, every new idea, it takes a generation or two until it becomes obvious that there's no real problem. It has not yet become obvious to me that there's no real problem. I cannot define the real problem, therefore I suspect there's no real problem, but I'm not sure there's no real problem.

It is only that my illusion is more real to me than reality. And so do we often build our world on an error, and cry out that the universe is falling to pieces, if any one but lift a finger to replace the error by truth.

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.

Even today I meet people who think of me automatically as a tough, insensitive, coarse guy named Stanley Kowalski. They can't help it, but, it is troubling.

In politics, reality and appearance are of equal importance. You cannot attend to one and neglect the other. A man must determine both what he is, and what others believe him to be.

Men still assume I must be like the girl I played in 'Emmanuelle.' John Wayne was never accused of killing people during his free time, but I'm forever stuck with the image of 'Emmanuelle.' The truth is, I should have got an Oscar for that role because I'm nothing like that woman.

People think we really look good. I think that's the biggest misconception people have.

Being famous gives you a lot of illusions of false self, of self-importance, a grandiosity, it becomes difficult to stay humble and real. You see so many people who don't succeed.

To me Arthur and James Bond aren't the same because they both drink. So I would kind of equate it to that. They're different guys who both have a similar habit. To me they're very different guys though.

The shadows of things are greater than themselves; and the more exaggerated the shadow, the more unlike the substance.

I think the oddest thing about the advanced people is that, while they are always talking about things as problems, they have hardly any notion of what a real problem is.

Generally, a lot of the things people think are made up are real, a lot of the things people think are real are made up, a lot of the things people think are spontaneous are cleverly faked, and a lot of the things people think are fake are spontaneous.

I have never really thought of myself as a writer about religion. And I think one of the things that happened to me as a result of all that is that I think it did for some people, many people, obscure the kind of writer that I actually am.

I have made you - along with Fox News has made you - think Obama is something that he isn't. And it's such a shame. I have so distorted who the real Obama is in your mind, that it is paralyzing our government. It is paralyzing the Speaker of the House, who really, really, really, really wants to go in there and really, really work with Obama, but he just can't. It's hard for people like Boehner to move too far in my direction because of the misperception of me, Obama says, created by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.

I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.

Popularity means people think they know you.

There is this false perception that comedians can never be serious. It's like from like the era of court jesters.

I look in the mirror. There's me. What's in the mirror is not real. So am I unreal?

The American citizen lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has more dignity than its original. We hardly dare face our bewilderment, because our ambiguous experience is so pleasantly irridescent, and the solace of belief in contrived reality is so thoroughly real. We have become eager accessories to the great hoaxes of the age. These are the hoaxes we play on ourselves.

fame is merely the fact of being misunderstood by millions of people.

Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?