191 Quotes by John Hurt

We are all racing towards death. No matter how many great, intellectual conclusions we draw during our lives, we know they’re all only man-made, like God. I begin to wonder where it all leads. What can you do, except do what you can do as best you know how.

My mother’s father drank and her mother was an unhappy, neurotic woman, and I think she has lived all her life afraid of anyone who drinks for fear something like that might happen to her.

You have to learn to cut your cloth accordingly. But it seems to be a human weakness. Once you start making a lot of money, you just join in with everyone else. It’s like the banks, and we’ve seen what happens there.

It would be difficult to have any unfulfilled ambitions because I don’t have any ambitions. I’ve never been that kind of performer.

I was keen on sports-that’s how my nose got this way. It’s not actually broken; the nose was just pushed up a little bit and moved over. It’s an aquiline nose, quite Irish.

We’re all far too afraid of being so arrogant to say “Either you can or you can’t.”

Obviously, the arrogance of my own nature in regards to other people’s work would suggest that I think I’m talented.

Acting is an imaginative leap, really. And imaginations prosper in different circumstances. And it’s being able – I can’t tell you how one does, but one tries to read those circumstances correctly.

I think it would be very difficult to play somebody if they didn’t think they had any virtues or redeeming characteristics.