Quotes from Alan Alda

I read science, because to me, that's extremely exciting. It's like a great detective story, and it's happening right in front of us.

We're highly social animals - I'm told by scientists that what makes us different from other animals is an acute social awareness, which is what has made us so successful.

Marie Curie is my hero. Few people have accomplished something so rare - changing science. And as hard as that is, she had to do it against the tide of the culture at the time - the prejudice against her as a foreigner, because she was born in Poland and worked in France. And the prejudice against her as a woman.

I'm an angry person, angrier than most people would imagine, I get flashes of anger. What works for me is working out when it's useful to use that anger.

As I am becoming older, the only thing that speeds up is time.

I'm in this wonderful position where I can do what interests me. And whatever comes along that interests me, I do. The rest of the time I bother scientists about communicating.

I'm most at home on the stage. I was carried onstage for the first time when I was six months old.

I play tennis non-obsessively. I seem to beat people I play a lot or half the time, so I guess I gravitate to people who are as bad as I am.

It's very important for us to see that science is done by people, not just brains but whole human beings, and sometimes at great cost.

I don't really worry about the size of the part much any more. It's nice to have more time to work on the character, and to have big scenes to play. But if there's something playable there, and if it's interesting to do, then that's nice.

I was brought up as a Catholic, and I'm no longer a Catholic. I don't talk about my beliefs too much in public probably because I feel very strongly that it's something personal - more than personal, it's private.

After a while I started to think of that as an image of something that went a lot deeper than the dead dog, which is you can't bring back anything to life.

I've never tried to manipulate my image.

Any play is hard to write, and plays are getting harder and harder to get on the stage.

What I always wanted to get seen as was as a good actor, when it was the acting I was doing. When I'm writing, I want to try to be seen as a good writer. Not as somebody with a particular idea to sell, or something like that.

When I got recognized as a writer, when I got the Emmy, I was more excited than the Emmys I had gotten as an actor.

You know what my earliest memories are? Going from one burlesque town to another. My father was in burlesque.

Usually, comedy shows only influence other comedy shows. 'M*A*S*H' is one of the few comedies that influenced dramatic shows as well.

I was always interested in figuring things out. I'd do experiments, like combining things I found around the house to see what would happen if I put them together.

In the midst of the sense of tragedy or loss, sometimes laughter is not only healing, it's a way of experiencing the person that you've lost again.

A really great actor, in a lucky performance, can transform himself or herself. I've seen actors do that. But often it's a mechanical transformation, which isn't as interesting, and you've got to be careful how you go about something like that, I think.

The President never intends to get into any kind of war situation. He gets carried away by events.

I'm in the real world, some people try to steal from me, and I stop them, frequently, take them to court. I love a good lawsuit. It's fun.

I used to be an amateur inventor when I was a kid; I'm always inventing something.