Robin Quotes
"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em."
"At that point, I became like a submarine on the bottom that blows out some ballast and gets back up again."
"It was like having emotional dry heaves."
"His life was absurd. He went all over the world accepting all kinds of bondage and escaping."
"I’d never seen so much energy contained in one person."
"Everything opened up. The whole world just changed in that one year."
"The theater needs you. Don’t be tempted by television or the movies."
"My imagination was my friend, my companion."
"Still, there were lessons that Juilliard could not teach Robin, desires it could not fulfill, and itches it could not scratch."
"As he was speaking to his friend on a Manhattan sidewalk, 'Bouncing down the street comes this guy in painter’s overalls and a Dutch boy cap, bounces right up and says hello in this beautiful, stentorian voice.'"
"Robin was ‘not the kind of guy who had much patience for rehearsal,’ but we planned a few things."
"It’s a guy sitting on a bench making masks, and he keeps trying them on. There’s an angry face, and a sad face and a laughing face."
"The sudden, painful shock of getting doused like that was one that Robin would reenact for years to come, often recoiling as he acted out the moment."
"The school did have a tendency to want to strip you of your own personal idiosyncrasies."
"You never had a serious conversation with Robin."
"Though he never gave her name publicly, he described her as ‘a free spirit who thought nothing about walking through tough neighborhoods wearing white lace gowns.’"
"I mean, Twyla Tharp doesn’t choreograph the June Taylor Dancers."
"I take you this way, then that way. Is old Soviet custom!"
"He just destroyed for like forty minutes. Everything he did got a laugh."
"He had this worried look on his face. He just went, ‘I don’t even know what’s funny anymore.’"
"You got to be crazy. You know what I’m talking about? Full goose bozo."
"Because if you lose that, pfft. That’s my only love. Crazy."
"Robin’s a very, very sensitive guy. He didn’t take rejection well."
"Robin was like a giant puppy: ‘Let’s play. Let’s goof around. Let’s do something.’"
"I’ve just signed on for six weeks with a show that may be the end of my career."
"I said, ‘God damn it, didn’t anybody teach you manners? Were you raised by the help in the kitchen?’ And he went: ‘Yeah.’"
"Robin would see something and he’d appreciate it for what it was and how good it was. And then he would incorporate it and do it his way, and add something to it."
"You could see right away, who’s this guy?"
"We announced our love for each other and that was the end of the evening."
"I know what I was on, but I don’t know what he was on. He was doing a lot of stuff."
"I was in a state of horror. Because this number essentially made Popeye an extra in his own song."
"He’s a simple man. He’s kind of bittersweet, he’s got a lot of pain, and he’s been through a lot."
"Don’t you understand that a star is just a big ball of glowing hot gas?"
"I’ve got something really terrible to tell you, Robin. He went, ‘What? What?’ And I said that John Belushi was found dead last night."
"For your information, it’s playing in Hollywood on a double bill with Heaven’s Gate."
"It was like going from Marvel Comics to Tolstoy."
"You couldn’t. You see the girls at the Rainbow Bar & Grill taking one too many quaaludes, going, ‘Is my lipstick on?’"
"They waved a lot of money at me, and then I tried to convince myself it would really be a political film. But slowly and surely it turned into just another beach movie."
"God. It’s out there somewhere. It’s got to be. Something with spirit, a character who doesn’t drive people crazy."
"His stand-up was still the one part of his life where Robin could have control over every element."
"The past few years had seen a rapid increase in the number of stand-up clubs across the country, and the explosive growth of cable television gave stand-up comedy a national platform."
"You ever see people, like a family of eight, living in a station wagon, have you seen that? Have you seen a sixteen-year-old wino wandering around Venice Beach?"
"Cocaine is one of the most selfish drugs in the world. The world is as big as your nostril."
"I don’t think I’ll ever be the type that goes, ‘I am now at one with myself.’"
"It’s a wonderful feeling when your father becomes not a god but a man to you—when he comes down from the mountain and you see he’s this man with weaknesses."
"For a guy who always had these insecurities, to finally be praised and all of a sudden to have made it, that was a great moment for him."
"It was a painful experience. We put our ass out and got kicked for it."
"It talks about something of the heart and of pursuing that which is a dream—and in some cases, to a tragic end."
"He was like, ‘We have a lot in common.’ I was like, ‘There’s no way we have anything in common’—I didn’t say that, but that’s what I’m thinking."
"I stopped running around with all this madness. I started to go, ‘Wait, I can live a life. I don’t have to live and die in my own sweat.’ I slowly pulled myself up. I started to create and to work—kind of like the phoenix that rises out of its own ass."
"The only obstacles standing in Robin’s way were his commitments to the work he had already done and to all the new work he had agreed to take on."
"When people go to see his movies, they want to see Williams as Williams. They don’t want to see him slipping three-fourths of the way under the skin of some other character."
"I thought the ’80s were an awful period in New York, and pretty much the country too. By the ’80s, everyone went, ‘Well, fuck it—we’re just going to make money.’"
"He said he’d never known any actors before; nor had he been much of a theater- or film-goer; but I think these experiences have changed me … (or will)."
"Playing a character as broken as Parry gave him permission to explore a very dark but valid part of himself as an actor and performer: the side that creates falsehoods—however fanciful—to shroud yourself from harsh truths."
"As long as you still keep taking the chances and you’re not afraid to play Peter Pan.… What if it fails? ‘I don’t care, I’m having a great fucking time.’ If I stop trying, I’d get afraid."
"All of a sudden, they release an advertisement—one part was the movie, the second part was where they used the movie to sell stuff. Not only did they use my voice, they took a character I did and overdubbed it to sell stuff. That was the one thing I said: ‘I don’t do that.’"
"For the first three weekends of its wider release, The Fisher King was number one at the U.S. box office."
"Family is where you find it; all are welcome and no one ever loses their membership."
"Your marriage may not have worked out, but if you have kids, you have to co-parent them for the rest of their lives."
"It’s harmful to them to not do it amicably."
"A man is losing contact with his kids, and he seizes upon an opportunity to see them more."
"Sometimes I have this kind of sentimental side that will go for—‘Oh, it’s about a puppy’ or ‘Ahhh, the nice lady died, and the kids…’ and she’d look at it and go, ‘No, it doesn’t work.’ That’s why I need her opinion."
"You’re not just her children, you know. You’re mine, too."
"I was an adequate father… No, I’d go further than that. I was a very good father."
"I’d ask you about love, you’d probably quote me a sonnet. But you’ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable."
"I can’t do a movie where all of a sudden I’ll blow things away and make a joke about it. Because we live in a world where that’s a reality."
"You have a responsibility to yourself, whatever your level of consciousness is, about what you do."
"Would you show this to your own children? What are you putting out there? What do you want to say?"
"It’s not black and white. There is this gray, going on constantly."
"A confusion, a doubt. A conscience being tweaked and pushed, back and forth."
"A man making a decision, going against his conscience and, in the end, hoping that he can find his way back."
"It’s what’s happened, and everyone knows."
"You appreciate little things, like walks on the beach with a defibrillator."
"You’re alive, and you’re not like, 'Thank you for coming. Nice to be here. Wonderful audience.'"
"You have to give up. That’s the time when you finally do have hope."
"You keep thinking, ‘I can handle this—I got this under control.’ Yeah, for a day."
"People keep saying, ‘Why don’t you do another Fisher King or Mrs. Doubtfire?’ But they don’t come along every day."
"I have been working straight for five years, only ever with a couple of months off in between."
"I guess they wanted me to stop the touchy-feely movies after Awakenings."
"You’re separated, with others. You start going, ‘Oh fuck.’"
"I’m looking for characters. The romantic parts are over."
"The more normal and regular it seems, the creepier it is."
"This youth, these people, and this incredible energy and intelligence and dedication is getting chewed up."
She loved taking him to her yoga studio for her gallery openings and things like that," said Cyndi McHale. "Susan was warm and friendly and inclusive for quite a while. She didn’t want anything to do with his business. She just wanted to paint.
"Robin wasn’t a guy that entertained," Billy Crystal said. "As a couple, Marsha did all that—Thanksgivings and big functions—so it was different with Susan. It was an adjustment to get to know her, because we were and still are so close with Marsha. What do you do in those situations? We got to know her a little bit."
"She’s an organizer. And Susan wanted people to take care of her. Things were just not the same."
"The line of work he was in bred anxiety and self-centered concerns," she said. "He would always say, ‘You’re only as good as your last performance.’"
"He was very modest about his career," McLaurin said. "We were having lunch somewhere and he said, ‘You know, that waiter, he has as much talent as I do.’ He said, ‘I just had a bunch of breaks.’"
"So that’s what I look like. You go your whole life never knowing how you look. And then there you are. You get hungry, you get stupid, you get shot and die. And you get this quick glimpse at how you look, to those around you, to the world. It’s never what you thought. And then it’s over. Curtains. Ka-boom."
"I’ll tell you what happens: God leans down just close enough and whispers into your ear: Go fuck yourself. And then He’s gone."
"Okay, boss. I’ll read the play again, let’s meet and we’ll talk.’ He called me boss. It was very moving."
"The show schedule was intense and his memory skills herculean."
"He’s just like us—he needs the validation," he said. "In the grand scheme of the audience, if you saw this show two times, back to back, you would not notice the difference. But for us, it’s monumental. Those small, minute things are what we all try to do in the game of making art. We try to perfect and perfect and perfect. And it’s never perfect."
"Robin was losing his mind and he was aware of it," she said.
"He wasn’t Robin at that point. He stopped being the guy we know. That part shut down."
"Robin, what did you do? What happened?" He answered, "I miscalculated."
"He’s like a leprechaun, I snorted my pot of gold."
"You start off in diapers, you end up in diapers. The bottom line is, I am one of the luckiest fucks in show business."
"What do you do in those situations? We got to know her a little bit."