191 Quotes by John Hurt

I have lots of favourite memories but I can’t say that I have a favourite film.

I put everything I can into the mulberry of my mind and hope that it is going to ferment and make a decent wine. How that process happens, I’m sorry to tell you I can’t describe.

If I’m in theatre, cinema doesn’t even cross my mind. Similarly when I’m making a film, theatre doesn’t cross my mind.

I think, you have to forget about intellect, to a degree. Intuition is very important when you’re working with a lens, I believe, for what the lens is doing, too.

I mark a script like an exam, and I try not to do anything under 50 per cent. Similarly with the part. And also film is a peculiar thing, parts don’t necessarily read in script form anything like as well as they can do when it comes to materialising.

I think you can fan the flames, but I think in the same way that a mathematician is a mathematician – He’s not taught to be a mathematician. He either has a feeling for equations and an understanding and delight in it, not only in the purity of it, but in its beauty as well.

You collect as much information as you can and then you put it into the mulberry of your mind and hope that you come up with a decent wine. Sometimes you do; sometimes you don’t.

It’s an immensely competitive business, and I can tell you the older you get, the parts are fewer, and the people who are proven performers are greater.

When you’re really working well with a director then you can be as outrageous as you like and so can he. And there’s no worry about it.