Brad Pitt Quotes
Actor
I phoned my grandparents and my grandfather said 'We saw your movie.' 'Which one?' I said. He shouted 'Betty, what was the name of that movie I didn't like?
By nature, I keep moving, man. My theory is, be the shark. You've just got to keep moving. You can't stop.
Man, when I'm riding with the helmet on, I'm invisible. And people just deal with me as the guy on the bike... it gives you a chance to read 'em.
A family is a risky venture, because the greater the love, the greater the loss... That's the trade-off. But I'll take it all.
I have very few friends. I have a handful of close friends, and I have my family, and I haven't known life to be any happier.
I always liked those moments of epiphany, when you have the next destination.
You must lose everything in order to gain anything.
I'm one of those people you hate because of genetics. It's the truth.
Happiness is overrated. There has to be conflict in life.
It's a violent world we live in. I don't agree with trying to hide that or cover it up.
Being married means I can break wind and eat ice cream in bed.
The best moments can't be preconceived. I've spent a lot of time in editing rooms, and a scene can be technically perfect, with perfect delivery and facial expression and timing, and you remember all your lines, and it is dead.
Heartthrobs are a dime a dozen.
I have a hard time with morals. All I know is what feels right, what's more important to me is being honest about who you are. Morals I get a little hung up on.
My happiest moment is the day they call wrap and I'm free. I'm not looking back.
I believe you make your day. You make your life. So much of it is all perception, and this is the form that I built for myself. I have to accept it and work within those compounds, and it's up to me.
Listen, I've been pretty fortunate. And if I've been underrated, it's actually been something I've been able to work with; I can surprise people. It sets me up to exceed expectations, so I don't mind.
I had a friend who worked at a hospice, and he said people in their final moments don't discuss their successes, awards or what books they wrote or what they accomplished. They only talk about their loves and their regrets, and I think that's very telling.
Success is a beast. And it actually puts the emphasis on the wrong thing. You get away with more instead of looking within.
America is a country founded on guns. It's in our DNA. It's very strange but I feel better having a gun. I really do. I don't feel safe, I don't feel the house is completely safe, if I don't have one hidden somewhere. That's my thinking, right or wrong.
I find all of my performances come down to mathematics in a sense - how do you approach the problem of this character? Sometimes I crack that problem, sometimes I don't.
I guess I just don't see America as separate from Vietnam or Ethiopia. This mentality of 'our team's better than yours' - it's a high school idea. My kids don't see those dividing lines, and I don't want to either.
I see religion more as a truck stop on your way to figuring out who you are.
My father came from a very poor background, but I was very fortunate in the sense that we were never in need. My dad was determined to make sure that we didn't want for things. He wanted to give us more opportunity than he had, a better shot at a better life.
I'd like to design something like a city or a museum. I want to do something hands on rather than just play golf which is the sport of the religious right.
There are no Hallmark cards that define the next chapter, or the value of a history together.
It's a lovely experience walking around a museum by yourself.
I am obsessively bent on quality - to an unhealthy degree.
I spent the '90s trying to hide out, trying to duck the full celebrity cacophony.
In Missouri, where I come from, we don't talk about what we do - we just do it. If we talk about it, it's seen as bragging.
By the time this concert ends this evening, 30,000 Africans will have died because of extreme poverty. By this time tomorrow evening, another 30,000. This does not make sense.
When I received my first paycheck from my now known day job, I spent it on a period Craftsman chair and a Frank Lloyd Wright-wannabe lamp. With my second paycheck, I bought a stereo.
I loved 'Saturday Night Fever' when I was a kid. I couldn't believe people talked that way. It was just a whole new culture I didn't understand. I snuck into it. It was an R-rated film. So it holds a special place.
I was very curious about the world even at a young age, and I don't know at what point I became aware that other cultures believed in different religions, and my question was, 'Well, why don't they get to go to Heaven then?'
Perhaps we don't need these religious concoctions to pillow the fear of death. Just the fact that there is an unknown, and something greater, can bring a feeling of peace. That's enough for me.
I have this fantasy of my older days, painting or sculpting or making things. I have this fantasy of a bike trip to Chile. I have this fantasy of flying into Morocco. But right now, it's about getting the work done and getting home to family. I have an adventure every morning, getting up.
My affliction has been... I can make something or draw something or design something better than I can explain it.
With sons and fathers, there's an inexplicable connection and imprint that your father leaves on you.
I'm a bit of a loner, you know? I'm more quiet by nature. And coming from, you know, hillbilly country, I'm probably more reserved.
I know when I go outside, there'll be a van or two and they'll probably follow us four out of seven days a week, trying to get something. But I'm just going across town and I know they're just wasting their day, so it doesn't bother me anymore.
The Internet has done a wonderful thing for us. But democracy doesn't work unless people are well informed, and I don't know that we are. People just don't have the time.
'The Assassination of Jesse James' remains one of my favorite films that I've done. You know, it's still labeled a loser.
I'm most comfortable with the Southern dialects, really. It's easy, for example, for me to do Irish because we've got Irish heritage where I come from.
I tell all the young guys, don't make choices because somebody else is telling you it's good from a career-maintenance perspective.
We're so complex; we're mysteries to ourselves; we're difficult to each other. And then storytelling reminds us we're all the same.
I start asking a lot of questions about my own life, and it's not necessarily fun, but it's a good exercise.
Deregulation created this epidemic of greed which according to the rules of capitalism was OK. Beyond that there was criminal behaviour. There have been no repercussions and it's hard to make your peace with.
I grew up in Oklahoma and Missouri, and I just loved film. My folks would take us to the drive-in on summer nights, and we'd sit on the hood of the car. I just had this profound love for storytelling.
It's hard to be surprised by a film. It's hard to be surprised by another actor or by a director when you've seen enough and been around. So when I am, or when I forget that I'm watching someone's movie, or when I don't know how someone made a certain turn that I didn't expect . . . You know, I'm in.
Once you get older, you get a little closer to yourself, intimate.
I'm sure they're saddened by me, and I get frustrated with them. But I love them, and at the end of the day if they need me or if they need anything, I'm there for them. Family.
I think someone's conversation, whether in e-mail or in person, should be private.
I oscillate between agnosticism and atheism.
I grew up on certain movies, particular movies that said something to me as a kid from Missouri, movies that showed me places I'd yet traveled, or different cultures, or explained something, or said something in a better way than I could ever say. I wanted to find the movies like that.
The latitude and longitudinal lines of where you are born determine your opportunity in life, and it's not equal. We may have been created equal, but we're not born equal. It's a lot to do with luck and you have to pass that on.
I would say that the directors that I've liked the most are all curious in nature - curious thinkers. They're all big questioners, I would say, first and foremost.
I always liked film as a teaching tool - a way of getting exposed to ideas that had never been presented to me. It just wasn't on the list of career options where I grew up.
Depression is not interesting to watch.
I grew up very religious, and I don't have a great relationship with religion.
I always knew I was going somewhere - going out. I just knew. I just knew. I just knew there were a lot more points of view out there.
That's the most important thing to me - that if I'm gonna spend however long it takes to make a movie, give up 14 hours a day for however many weeks or months, then it's very important for me to know that I'm working with people who I respect and enjoy and that we're going for something together.
To leave home, it's got to be worth leaving.
At the end of the day, we get to be parents, greeting our lovely, crazy children and talking about their day, making sure they brush their teeth, so all the tension from our day is tabled... until the next.
It might be a very human thing across the board, but we, in America, love a story - we need a story to get involved in. But then everything becomes more about how the story protects a certain perception as we pick sides.
When I was a little kid we moved to Tulsa, then to St. Louis and, by the time I was in kindergarten, we lived in Springfield, Missouri. There I basically grew up.
You want to stake your own claim. You don't want to be called a copycat.
I get enraged when people start telling other people how to live their lives.
I think L.A. is impossible. There's just too much media focus. You can't live a normal life.
Where I grew up - we started out in Oklahoma and then moved to Missouri - it was considered hubris to talk about yourself. And the downside of that was that ideas rarely got exchanged, or true feelings.
I had a very supportive family environment that gave me room to explore and discover things about myself.
What we're seeing now is that greed is still alive and kicking, and banks are bigger than ever.
My training is documented on film.
Indian cinema seems to be growing very well at its own pace.
I've always been at war with myself, for right or wrong. I don't know how to explain it more. It's universal. Some people are better at dealing with it, and they sleep with no pain - not pain, arguments. I've grown quite comfortable with being at war.
When I first moved to L.A., I discovered Roy London. I didn't know anything about the arts, the profession; I had no technique, I knew nothing, I'm fresh from Missouri. I sat in on a few classes, and they just felt a little guru-ish and just didn't feel right to me. Until I met Roy.
I didn't realize how interesting the place I come from is until I left home and saw how other cultures handled things differently.
How many stories have you read that aren't true, stories about me and Angie being married or fighting or splitting up? And when we don't split up, there's a whole new round that we've made up and we're back together again!
You hear stories of intense actors who can't shed their character and who don't know who they are for a week or two after. I'm not that guy, man.
If I'm gonna spend however long it takes to make a movie, give up 14 hours a day for however many weeks or months, then it's very important for me to know that I'm working with people who I respect and enjoy and that we're going for something together.
When I was a boy, I would ask about my family history, about my bloodlines. We really didn't know that much. We had a little Indian in us from the Oklahoma Trail of Tears.
I've always been at war with myself, for right or wrong.
It's those difficult times that inform the next wonderful time, and it's a series of trade-offs, of events, of wins and losses.
I just don't like the separatism that comes from religion, and, without fail, the need to put your beliefs on someone else. When you start telling someone else how to live, you should check yourself, man.
When you first get opportunities, suddenly you get surrounded by a lot of people who want to make money off you but also are there to help. But they start telling you so much what you need to be and what you need to do to maintain some idea of career maintenance.
I look and there's our boy from Vietnam and our daughter from Ethiopia, and our girl was born in Namibia, and our son is from Cambodia, and they're brothers and sisters, man. They're brothers and sisters and it's a sight for elation.
What's valuable to me has become clearer as I've got older. To me, it's about the value of your time and your day and the value of the people you spend it with.
I'd say that 'Tree of Life' is not a Christian so much as a spiritual film.
I've been no stranger to change.
Certainly the attrition rate of Hollywood couples looms large.
Actions speak louder than words, and it's no more true than with your kids.
It took me a good decade of hiding in my house and not going outside to even, like, get my arms around this idea of celebrity, where suddenly people are looking for you to pick your nose or get a shot of you kissing some woman. It's a very discombobulating thing.
My life has been about big changes.
Family - and certainly kids and a stable relationship - is something bigger than yourself. They need you to sit down with them, be there for them when they wake up in the middle of the night.
My kids are just waiting for me at home. I'm their father. They're wondering, 'When's Daddy coming home?'
I'm much more experienced now, so I can find films that are interesting quicker and cut out the films that don't really matter. It means more to me now because my kids are going to see them, and I want them to be proud.
I would love to work in a Bollywood film as there is so much drama and colour in the films there.
I'm actually very snobbish about directors. I have to say 'no' all the time. 'No' is the most powerful word in our business. You've got to protect yourself.
I've worked with some really great directors, and I'm really choosy about them because they're telling the story at the end of the day.
You never know when I might decide to work in a Bollywood film and do one of those dance numbers with the whole crew in the backdrop.
Religion works. I know there's comfort there, a crash pad. It's something to explain the world and tell you there is something bigger than you, and it is going to be alright in the end. It works because it's comforting.