140 Quotes by Mickey Rourke

Where I come from, being a hard man is being able to take a good beating and then get back up again and carry on fighting.

As time goes by and you're getting older and stuff like that - getting older sucks. You know, I hear all this crap about, 'Oh, you can age with dignity.' Really?

People are always afraid of the truth.

I spent so long studying really hard to become a fine actor, but threw it all away because I got the adulation and the fame so easily

People ask me about that all the time. They say, "Did you ever think of directing?" And I say, "It's completely out of the question."

The hardest thing in life to do is to change.

I come from a violent background. So I became hard. I realised that I had made myself that way to deal with a feeling of abandonment and shame.

I had achieved so much success in my career and then had this spectacular fall from grace that left me unemployed and living in a town, Los Angeles, that is built on envy. Once you fall, people don't really root for you to come back again. I'd go to restaurants where I always had the best table and half the time they wouldn't even let me pay. And then when I stopped making movies, the same places wouldn't even give me a lousy table, never mind the best one!

I've been with a lot of women, but who's counting? It's nothing I'm proud of. It's a physical need. Sometimes afterwards I just want to blow my brains out, it's so meaningless.