Quotes by Nicolas Cage

I would definitely return to Austria. They were all good experiences for me, but definitely Austria because there were some ancient Celtic, sacred sites that were in the forest that were quite beautiful.

To live you have to experiment, to have the ability to experiment you have to have confidence, to have confidence you have to be loved, to be loved you have to love.

I would rather have had one breath of her hair, one kiss from her mouth, one touch of her hand, than eternity without it.

I try not to be proud. I try to actively attack pride.

One of the pluses of getting older is you set some limits.

It's important to keep the eccentric spirit alive, because when that goes, the work will go.

I wasn't any good at romnace. I was a total nerd. My thing is, I was just too romantic. I was the romantic goofball. I wasn't cynical enough or harsh enough. I cared too much, so I always made a fool out of myself.

I'm always going to judge somebody on their work ethic, and whether or not they made me feel something, or whether or not I felt they did a good job. To me, it's important to try to block anything personal out and look at the performance, in any field.

I think a good movie is a good movie whether that falls into a genre or not.

Generally my instinct is to not do biographical movies. I want to build characters and not be locked into playing a part in history.

To begin... To begin... How to start? I'm hungry. I should get coffee. Coffee would help me think. Maybe I should write something first, then reward myself with coffee. Coffee and a muffin. Okay, so I need to establish the themes. Maybe a banana-nut. That's a good muffin.

Yeah, my real name is Coppola. I changed it because they'd think I was some nepotism-oriented kid.

I never say never, but I haven't been given the quality of script to compel me to go on television.

I do like characters that have flaws, some sort of pathos to them that they are trying to sort out.

I think I've become more relaxed throughout my career. I don't feel the need to jump up and down and make a big noise to get people to pay attention to me. I don't need to do punk rock gestures or eat a cockroach or do something weird to say I exist.

If you're really special, meaning you're doing something unique and original, it could scare people.

I think anything that opens my mind and triggers my imagination I'm reading. I like to read science fiction and imagine the character. Anything that keeps my imagination flowing.

If you get a chance, whenever you're traveling, do go to the local boutique comic book shop and don't buy your comics online 'cause those guys are going to go extinct, in a minute here, and we want to be able to have those experiences with our kids.

When I started experimenting with fantasy and horror films and looking for characters who had some sort of emotional or mental difficulty, I saw opportunities to express my music -- dare I say art -- in a way that I could get a bit surreal.

I like being at that place where you can either fall or stand. That's where I think you really have a shot at doing something truthful.

I don't like it when people on the street say smile or cheer up. It's a real cheap line. I'm feeling good. I'm feeling real grateful for everything. It's a solid time in my life. When people say I look sad, they're wrong.

One of the first signs of being depressed is that you lose interest in things. That's why I think it is important to stay passionate.

There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is, how do we arm the other 11?

You aren't a true internationalist until you've supplied weapons to kill your own countrymen.

I loved 'Fantasia' as a kid because it filled me with wonder, enchantment and awe. It was my first real introduction into classical music. It was totally inspiring to me.

Movies work, in my opinion, on the best level when they're more enigmatic, when we don't say it's this or that and where it raises more questions than answers.

One of the great bonuses of being a film actor is that I get to go to different places, meet inspiring people and learn different things. So all those details add up.

Don't lose the best thing in your life just because you are not sure.

I was thinking about being more global in my work, which means trying more foreign countries and working with foreign filmmakers, hoping they would give me a new take on my work, a new point of view, reinvent me in some way.

God bless the popcorn film. Especially movies where you can take the kids, because I remember looking forward to seeing these movies with my parents, and if I can give that back, I'm gonna do it.

Nobody ever thinks clearly at the airport.

I think that the best characters are the ones who both manage to be attractive and repulsive at the same time.

We've become so glorified in the movie-star system that it's become this artificial royalty. The truth is that we're circus clowns.

Some things are true whether you believe in them or not.

Nobody can make a movie as exciting as Jerry Bruckheimer. When it's a Jerry Bruckheimer movie that it's going to have lots of chrome and gloss, it's going to be sexy, and it's going to be big and fun.

Actors work with their look. I come from the Lon Chaney Sr. school of acting. I'll wear wigs, I'll wear nose pieces, I'll wear green contact lenses in my eyes. I'll do whatever I need to do to create a character.

I had been making a lot of family oriented movies, which I also like. But I still have a passion for the midnight audience and for midnight movies.

I cry a lot. My emotions are very close to my surface. I don't want to hold anything in so it festers and turns into pus -- a pustule of emotion that explodes into a festering cesspool of depression.

I love it all. I don't want to go through my career with one hand tied behind my back. I love making kids happy. I love the midnight audience. I like intense dramas. And I like high-adrenaline action films.

I would like to hook up with one of the great Japanese filmmakers, like the master that made Ringu, and I would like to take 'The Wicker Man' to Japan, except this time he's a ghost.

Helen Mirren is someone that I have really admired ever since I saw her in Excalibur. That was the first thing I said to her. I loved you as Morgan Le Fay.

I always wanted to find a way to apply my acting in a big mad monster movie where I was transforming into this scary entity.

I'm going to steal the Declaration of Independence.

Those who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action.

I always say, if you think it's over the top then tell me where the top is first. I don't think anyone can. But if you can tell me where the top is then I'll tell you whether or not I'm over it.

Remakes are always a challenge and they always are sitting ducks.

You often feel like you are on a high wire with no net productions because you have to rely on spontaneity and come up with ideas on the spur of the moment -- and then what happens is that there is electricity to it that gets caught.

I love art, I love music. I can listen to Stockhausen and a very experimental, avant-garde approach, and I can listen to Beethoven and have a more classical, traditional approach. Why not be able to do that with film performance?

If you have people that totally support you and have your back, I feel like you have all the confidence in the world, and you believe that you can do things that most people can't achieve. I feel that's really important.

It's kind of a unique concept, but it's totally real, isn't it? ... I mean, these paramedics put themselves in incredibly stressful situations, are killing themselves to save our lives and they're not really regarded or appreciated.

With my name in cement, I feel actualised. -- On cementing his hand prints on Sunset Boulevard.

I actually enjoy working with green screen, because I can imagine all that stuff happening, and I really cut my teeth on a movie I made called Adaptation where I had to imagine four-page dialogue scenes with my twin brother, who was nothing more than a tennis ball and a gas stand.

The most meaningful movies I can make are the ones where parents can share them with their children and children can look forward to sharing them with their parents, a ritual if you will, where they get to spend time together and the kids are smiling.

When you're playing supernatural characters, there's an infinite number of possibilities with a character. And I also think they're wonderful and entertaining for the whole family. You don't have a high body count.

I went to New Orleans for the first time for Wild at Heart, and I kept going back to make more movies there. I've become very close to the city and part of me does feel like a New Orleanian.

More than ever, movies reveal themselves as healing, as helpful, as encouraging, as escapist -- anything that makes someone get through their day in these times. It's the best form of entertainment, and it's still arguably the most inexpensive form of entertainment.

My father always used to say to me, it doesn't matter what the profession is, but if they're the best in their field, it will always be fascinating to watch.

Without impending on your own personal choice, there are going to be those that wear the hat of religion and those that wear the hat of science. I still don't really understand why they can't wear both hats, because personally, I think that they go beautifully together.

The best characters are the ones that somehow manage to be both attractive and repulsive at the same time. If you do that, you're at the center of the universe -- if you can find characters who are more ambiguous and can raise more questions than answers.

I just try to keep it fresh. I try to keep it interesting. The truth is my roots are independently spirited dramas that are small, and I will always go back to that well, because that's where I broke out of. But I'm going to keep doing as many different movies as I possibly can.

Feel like real time unfolding. It's going to smack of reality and feel as real as it can ... The buildings themselves aren't (shown) ... The movie's about what happened amongst this handful of men when the buildings came down.

I got into film acting because I wanted to be James Dean. We lost him at a very young age -- he was only 24 -- but I'm 51 going on 52, so there's only so many times you can act like James Dean. I had to find new ways of expressing myself that kept me fascinated with film performance.

Halloween has always been fascinating to me from a very young age. I think any actor would be fascinated by Halloween because it's one of the only holidays that advocates dressing up in makeup and costumes and transforming oneself.

I like the idea of being involved in pictures that can entertain the entire family and can stimulate youngsters into looking at picture books. There's nothing wrong with that.

Peter Fonda is the reason I became a motorcyclist. I saw Easy Rider and I bought a motorcycle the next day, and I rode it all the way from LA to San Francisco.

These so called Popcorn movies, or family movies, actually provide something quite beautiful and something quite necessary, which is a family bonding experience.

I'm sad about this, but we shouldn't have been married in the first place.

Helen Mirren is someone that I have really admired ever since I saw her in 'Excalibur.' That was the first thing I said to her. 'I loved you as Morgan Le Fay.'

Children, to me, are of the utmost importance. They're really the future, aren't they?

The movies I cannot go without and that I watch annually are 'A Clockwork Orange,' 'Scarface' and 'Fantasia.'

I like both Blu-ray and DVD, but Blu-ray gives you more options.

If I do do a sequel, I'm going to have to know for sure that the script is better than the original. So I'm going to be very careful about that because I'm not eager to repeat myself.

I'm not contractually obligated to sequels on anything.

Mike Myers as Austin Powers makes me laugh -- that was genius -- and Daffy Duck makes me laugh, but I like odd behavior. I don't like hip dialogue and one-liners and all that sort of cool, sophomoric comedy. It's just not for me.

In this day and age, where you have a lot of comic book movies made every day, and most of them are really good boys, it's important to have a couple bad boys out there, too.

I like movies where you feel like you're going into another world, and no matter how many times you watch it, you're gonna see something new in that world. That level of detail really inspires me.

I do enjoy animated movies. I really love anime and movies like 'Spirited Away' and 'Howl's Moving Castle.'

I've always maintained that I see myself as a student. There's always something to learn and be challenged by and hopefully grow from.

When I won the Oscar, I made a point of actively going against that and doing adventure films like 'Con Air' and 'Gone in 60 Seconds,' not what would be expected.

I'm not a trained actor. I'm someone who is autodidactic and learned on my own.

I definitely went through my magic phase. I think all little boys do at some point or another -- they get fascinated by magic tricks.

You get dinged for wanting to do a comedy, then wanting to do a big-budget action film, and then wanting to do an indie. But you can't let other people trying to label you get in the way of trying to do something artistically.

Acting is like any other art form, in that you have the option to go very big or go very small.

I would love to work with Tim Burton. I think we would be very good together.

I've always had an interest in Louisiana, especially New Orleans.

I knew I wanted to be an actor when I was very young. I guess I was about 6 years old at the time, and I was fascinated by television. I started having waking fantasies where I was in a movie and there were crane shots of me during a scene.

I use technology for communication, but I don't have a Blackberry or an iPhone. I use an outdated cell phone, but I'm fine with it.

I'm not really gadget oriented. I'm not into technology or computers. I'm not good at interfacing with that sort of gear.

I always say to myself that if I can make a movie that makes a kid smile or gives them some hope or something to get excited about, then I'm applying myself in the best way that I can. I don't think that just goes for kids. I think that it goes for adults, as well, and for families.

Just because you're a man doesn't mean that you can't raise your kid. I think that families should stay together, but if you are a single father, don't give up no matter what they say.

Often you hear stories about never working with children. I disagree because children still have that residual magical thinking. They haven't had their imagination knocked out of them by turning into adults and life experiences.

Good science fiction is intelligent. It asks big questions that are on people's minds. It's not impossible. It has some sort of root in the abstract.