William Hurt

Being a father, being a friend, those are the things that make me feel successful.

The irony is that the more specific you are in the portrayal of character, the more like other people you are. In the same way, the more you think about how alone you are in this life, you realise how much a brother and sister everyone else is.

The problem with Google is you have 360 degrees of omnidirectional information on a linear basis, but the algorithms for irony and ambiguity are not there. And those are the algorithms of wisdom.

The achievement is appreciation. Your ability to be surprised and awed by beauty!

Heroes to me are guys that sit in libraries. They absorb knowledge and then the risks they take are calculated on the basis of the courage it took to become replete with knowledge.

Great risks come in long term, tremendously assiduous, very courageous study.

But I am not going to live for ever. And the more I know it, the more amazed I am by being here at all.

I am not a famous person at home - I'm just a guy here. I'm a father, I'm a companion, I'm a human being. I am not a public figure in my house; I am not a celebrity. I am not a famous person to myself - I am just a guy.

Being famous is not something that would make me feel successful - unless one was striving for mediocrity.

Sometimes people call me a success for all the reasons that make me think I'm a failure.

The enemies of acting are mood and attitude and other general homogenized disruptive entities. Whereas acting is about action - doing - and unless you can figure out a way to craft in an imaginative reality to which you don't submit, you're going to be out of control. You'll flip out. The job is to be surprised.