114 Quotes by Mike Nichols

The reason you do this stuff - comedy, plays, movies - is to be seized by something, to disappear in the service of an idea.

With a preliminary look at the budget, I don't see how to fund the debt service fund. The debt service will be in the hole next year. And number two, there's the school capital budget.

The reason that most British actors are better than most American actors in the end is that they don't make any money. At the very end of their lives, they get into a space movie and they make a lot of money, but until that happens, basically, they don't have bank accounts. They live from day to day.

Very often when a story really holds us, it gets pushed away because it's too close for comfort.

Fear of comedy is all so much about who you do it with.

I used to say that winning the Oscar means being back at the Beverly Hills Hotel at 1 A.M. feeling empty. It's the industry voting. It doesn't come from God. It doesn't change your life, really.

The thing about being an outsider... is that it teaches you to hear what people are thinking because you're constantly looking for the people who just don't give a damn.

The things that you saw earlier in your life generally have more power than the things you saw last week.

Technically, maybe I learned most of all from George Stevens, and among his movies I learned the most from 'A Place in the Sun.' It's a lesson in moviemaking.