Joaquin Phoenix Quotes

Music helps shape the way people think about the world and act in the world.

I want to make it clear: it's not that I hate mainstream cinema. It's perfectly fine. There are a lot of people who need to escape, because they are in very difficult situations, so they have the right to escape from the world. But this has nothing to do with an art form.

As I got older, with my work, I became aware of the responsibility of film, and I feel one of the best ways I can apply myself as an actor, is to go beyond movie stardom and celebrity.

Shakespeare and Rembrandt have in common the faculty of quickening speculation and compelling the minds of men to combat and discussion.

Literature is well enough, as a time-passer, and for the improvement and general elevation and purification of mankind, but it has no practical value.

It's always great to do a movie that you find is entertaining, but also can give some sort of political or social message.

It is a peculiar art form, but I think it's a necessary art form - and I do believe it's a noble art form.

The value of music is not dazzling yourself and others with technique.

I'm told we movie critics praise movies that are long and boring.

Art is often valuable precisely because it isn't a sensible way to make money.

The demarcation between an art house film and an entertainer has blurred, only because a larger section of the audience has accepted such realistic films.

Any work of art that can be understood is the product of journalism.

I don't care what reviewers think. If somebody hates a performance of mine, I kind of get a kick out of it. It amuses me when critics take something so irrelevant as a movie so seriously.

I don't take the movies seriously, and anyone who does is in for a headache.

The older I get, I'm really reminded how important the arts are to our wellbeing as a society.

It's great, I guess, when your paintings are hanging up in a museum.

Music is part of us, and either ennobles or degrades our behavior.

Because technically actors are just public servants really. They just tell stories because people need to be told stories. That's all it is. And yet we get treated as though we're important.

A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.

I don't think good films have messages.

I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you're an idiot.

Music, at its very best, is dangerous.

Summoning artists to participate In the august occasions of the state Seems something artists ought to celebrate A golden age of poetry and power Of which this noonday's the beginning hour.

I always ask, 'Is this movie essential? Does this movie need to exist? Does it need to exist right now?' And the answer to that is almost always no.

Film can be a tool for change; it can start a debate.