Stories I Only Tell My Friends Quotes
"That said, when my girlfriend and others would constantly swoon over him, when I would see him continually splashed across the newspapers, resplendent like an American prince, I wasn’t above the occasional male thought of: Screw that guy."
"As a person navigating the waters of public scrutiny, you are often unable to hold on to personal heroes or villains."
"In an effort to find substance, meaning, and excitement, I had become deeply involved in the world of politics."
"He smiled. We shook hands and I was relieved that my by then ex-girlfriend wasn’t there to notice that he was slightly taller than I was, or to comment on who had better-looking hair."
"Eventually, as we were both single guys in our twenties, the talk turned to girls."
"You never can tell, so you eventually learn to live without a rooting interest in the parade of stars, musicians, sports champions, and politicians."
"The politics of the workplace can be complicated, Machiavellian, self-serving, and just downright stupid no matter where you work."
"The end of the century approached. The ’90s were a time of building for me."
"But I saw that his question was real, and that he seemed to be grappling with a sort of puzzle he could not solve."
"I put two and two together. 'Looks like you have a great girl. That’s half the battle right there.'"
"My dad started working late, my mom and I spent more and more time at my grandparents’ (without my dad), and it became normal that my dad’s presence in the house was minimal."
"Anything painful surrounding my parents’ breakup I sealed off and buried, left unexplored and undisturbed, like nuclear waste."
"It’s almost impossible now to imagine a Malibu without Wolfgang Puck, Nobu sushi, Starbucks, and paparazzi documenting every B-list celebrity who walks out the door with a latte, but it did exist, once upon a time."
"In spite of being on crutches after my big stunt jump, I still managed to catch my buses into Hollywood for the occasional audition."
"I’m deeply suspicious and rarely entertained by conventionally accepted turning points in a plot, of events that are meant to seem earth-shatteringly dramatic when in fact, to me, they are merely predictable."
"You must have a masochistic streak to deal with the rejection in failure and the unrelenting scrutiny in success."
"If there is an eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room, I won’t be the one to point it out, lest I be eaten by it."
"Fake confidence on the outside, as I will later learn, often trumps truthful turmoil on the inside."
"I marvel at the mercurial forces of fortune and am reminded that one must be ever vigilant to stay on one’s own path, without envy of others."
"Teenage years are a time of profound emotion."
"There is very little rhyme or reason for who gets what in Hollywood."
"I’m not exactly Mr. Popularity with the ladies."
"You remind me very much of a young Warren Beatty."
"If you really knew me, you wouldn’t like me nearly as much."
"It’s hard to look cool in your new car with your six-year-old brother in the backseat."
"This new sense of freedom is powerful enough to knock me to my knees, right here in room 625."
"It’s like my own first apartment—and in fact, it is."
"Aah, I see, he’s trying to create a class system on the set, trying to make us Greasers jealous."
"On The Outsiders, ball busting will become a fine art."
"Her expression is one I’ve never seen before. It’s like she has a thought balloon over her head that reads: ‘Holy shit! How lucky am I?!’"
"I learned more about preparing a character in those two weeks than I probably would have in two years elsewhere."
"If you are fortunate enough to be part of a hit, particularly a transcendent one, all emotional ownership is transferred from you to the audience."
"Stars are almost always the most gracious people on set. It’s part of the job and they know it."
"You don’t survive to become a star if you have a bad attitude."
"You can’t build a life on a backstage pass. Or free swag at Sundance."
"I have always had a crush on her and now it is off the scale."
"I make no attempt to hide it. In fact, I bring a six-pack of Corona with me to the meeting."
"There is a commotion in the aisles, as it becomes clear that we are indeed being pulled over."
"He leans in close, looking intensely into my eyes. He then slaps me upside the head, hand. 'My grandkids love ya!' he says, and walks off."
"I don’t know what the official purpose of this meeting is, have no idea what she’s been told about me or why she’s agreed to meet me."
"I’m about to have the greatest movie-watching experience of my life."
"I leave impressed with them both, Tom for his big brain and Jane for her passion and beauty."
"I once saw Chris appear with Diane Ladd in a reading of the sappy warhorse Love Letters."
"Years later, someone will call this phenomenon ‘objectification.’ Then, I didn’t really know that I was being treated like an object."
"It’s a nice full circle from his early, kind words so many years ago."
"Rather than blow the movie apart, which confronting Bogdanovich most certainly would have done, I drink almost every day after work to quiet my conscience."
"And every artist can chase his own vision into a blind alley."
"The original writers took their names off of it."
"We are moving quickly. Sheryl and I have a long journey ahead."
"But back in my bachelor pad in the Hollywood Hills, this vision is immediately fogged by fear and force of habit."
"I am so tired of the lying, my inability to keep my word, the bullshit relationships, the hangovers, the cover-ups, and the helplessness to stop doing the things I truly want to stop doing."
"There is no excuse for pedestrian dialogue, particularly when there is a great history of Western vernacular."
"I drive my new family home so carefully that you’d have thought I was carrying nitroglycerine."
"But, as they say in sobriety, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans."
"The West Wing pilot may be the best one ever made."
"Not The West Wing. Right out of the gate, it blew your doors off."
"I’ve been coming to these up-fronts for a lot of years. I’ve never seen this."
"None of this means a thing until we get the ratings."
"We’re big, we’re state of the art, and we’re coming to a town near you."
"If you raise ’em right, it’ll never stop."
"I can’t believe they didn’t tell you," she says quietly. "Martin shot the cover an hour ago. With John Spencer instead of you."
"But I think it’s bullshit that I’m the only actor on the show who hasn’t been given even a penny raise."
"But its real gift was that, in the end, it challenged me as a man."
"I am still in love with my wife. After almost twenty years of marriage, I look at her face and see her radiant light."