495 Quotes by Sylvester Stallone

Don't be gullible, use life before it uses you. Understand there are no free lunches, and for every action you take, there's a reaction.

Just because society says I'm old doesn't mean I am.

I started out as an actor, but I forced myself to be a writer, even though I wasn't very good at it and had never written. I don't think I ever passed an English course in my life. My first eight to 10 scripts were pretty horrendous, but I stayed at it, stayed at it, and stayed at it, until I eventually found a voice and a subject like Rocky that people were interested in.

To be really artful, though, you have to be subjective and so singular.

Movies are the work of a collective conscious. It takes 500-800 people on a movie to complete a vision.

I'm not handsome in the classical sense. The eyes droop, the mouth is crooked, the teeth aren't straight, the voice sounds like a Mafioso pallbearer, but somehow it all works.

Painting is as close as a person can get to actually capturing the heat of the moment.

The idea that boxing lends itself to cinema so well is because it's usually a morality play - good against evil, insecurity and triumph, fear strikes out, so the audience can really get drawn into the drama of it. Also, it was sensual and very primal. I think subliminaly we do two things - life is a fight, life is a struggle and we understand that from our early, early, early ancestors, and life is a race.

Most action is based on redemption and revenge, and that's a formula. Moby Dick was formula. It's how you get to the conclusion that makes it interesting.