Sean Penn Quotes

• "1 think, you know, if the right project kind of came along that I would be able to direct, I would love to do that."
• "At this stage, what would be rewarding would be for audiences to want to watch."
• "But I'm never again going to do a movie as an actor where I'm enjoying myself. It's not fun, and it doesn't have to be."
• "Child-rearing is my main interest now. I'm a hands-on father."
• "Directing is the ultimate job of an appreciator."
• "Directors like Alejandro come along very rarely, and you're very lucky if you stumble across one in your life as an actor."
• "I appreciate words, and I appreciate acting, so combining those elements into a film is the ultimate act of appreciation."
• "I don't have any particular excitement about working with any specific director or actor at this point."
• "I like to believe that love is a reciprocal thing, that it can't really be felt, truly, by one."
• "I love acting, truly my favorite people are actors."
• "I really love to make movies."
• "I start to giggle the minute that Gary Shandling walks in a room, so I'm going to have to say Gary was the funniest."
• "I think it's much more important to direct movies but if it's going to take five years between each one then I'll have to make up for that."
• "I think life's an irrational obsession."
• "I think that any time you really concentrate, there's a certain amount of adrenaline rush, yeah."
• "I think that I've still not been successful at playing the role of the retired actor, and I'd like to work on that."
• "I think that people like the Howard Sterns, the Bill O'Reillys and to a lesser degree the bin Ladens of the world are making a horrible contribution."
• "I think that you become a bit enlightened to the concerns of the filmmaking process more when you direct."
• "I think we all have light and dark inside us."
• "I think you start to prepare the minute you read something."
• "I wanted to come to Iraq and see Iraqi faces - children, adults, diplomats, anybody that implies - and go home with some impressions that will not let me off the hook. . . . It's not abstract anymore."
• "I'm a little bit computer illiterate."
• "I'm not a breakfast eater."
• "I've never really been one to get what they call stage fright so much."
• "If I win the lottery, I'm gonna direct three to four pictures every four to five years, instead of one - and there won't be time to act."
• "If there's anything disgusting in the movie business, it is the whoredom of my peers."
• "If you're willing to put two thoughts into a picture then you're already ahead of the game."
• "In between, I go broke because I seem to do movies where you're not paid a lot as an actor."
• "It has nothing to do with the emotional demands of a role; I've done comedies that are as draining to me as any drama."
• "It varies from role to role and the type of the piece and the people you're working with. All those factors contribute to how you function on a movie."
• "Love is a mess, at best, and I figure it can be very real in spite of all the things people try to attach to it."
• "Marriage ain't easy, but it's great most of the time."
• "My daughter is changing so rapidly now that her likes are different every day, and I love being involved with that."
• "My favorite thing to do is not act - it's that simple."
• "Oh, I'm a big-mouth. I said a lot of things."
• "On any movie I'm involved with, I say what I think."
• "Once in a while, one of these Hollywood-Hollywood movies works like the old ones did."
• "Sacrificing American soldiers or innocent civilians in an unprecedented preemptive attack on a separate sovereign nation may well prove itself a most temporary medicine."
• "So if we have anything original to offer, it's to speak from our own life about the society we're in."
• "So, if you're an artist who is in it just for the money, I would be against you."
• "Somewhere along the line, the actions of this government are the actions of me."
• "That on a romantic level, if you feel it about somebody and it's pure, it means that they do too."
• "The bottom line is, you love your wife, you do your best with that."
• "The first role was something on stage and it was 20-something years ago."
• "There are a few directors around who I have some excitement about spending my $7 at the theatre watching their movies."
• "There is no re-inventing the wheel."
• "There's a lot of mediocrity being celebrated, and a lot of wonderful stuff being ignored or discouraged."
• "There's not a lot of good movies being made."
• "There's the death penalty as society deals with it and legislates it, and I'm against it."
• "There've been a couple of times when I've gotten the offer to do the odd one that'll make the bank big forever."
• "To look at the world as it is now, without recognising and acknowledging that there is a gigantic bearer of revenge and redemption, would be criminal on behalf of a filmmaker."
• "Well, I think that when you direct a movie or write it. And in the case of the two movies I did, I wrote and directed, they occupy a special place for you."
• "Well, look at all of these summer blockbusters. You can't help but laugh a little, because you've already seen a lot of these movies 482 times."
• "Well, outside of the excitement of being able to participate in anything with somebody like Terry Malick who I have a great admiration for, was diving the Great Barrier Reef on the weekend."
• "What happens is things come to you - director, script - and if you respond to it, it's because it's tapping into some part of what's inside you, and different roles tap into different parts."
• "Whenever I've been on the other side of the law, as it were, I've never conspired to do malice toward somebody, so I didn't feel like now the shoe was on the other foot or anything like that."
• "Yeah, I had a tremendous time shooting in Nebraska. I like that state a lot, all over it."
• "Yeah, I had actually tried to stop acting before I made Dead Man Walking."
• "You can't get paid $20 million for the kind of movies I want to do,"
• "You try to do your best at what you're getting paid for."
• "Family makes me feel there's a reason I'm alive... I'm feeling my life, which I didn't always do partly because I'd be drunk a lot."
• "It's only in innocence you find any kind of magic, any kind of courage."