Quotes from Alan Alda

Awards can give you a tremendous amount of encouragement to keep getting better, no matter how young or old you are.

I used to not want to die in any way but in my sleep when I was a young man. I'd like to die awake now, if possible, with people around me who love me.

To do a musical takes a tremendous amount of energy because you have to act and sing at the same time. And everything has to be precise. Because you can't forget the lyrics because the band keeps playing, you know, and you're under a certain amount of pressure.

And I think belief is one of those things that comes to people in their own way. And just because I believe in something doesn't mean I think that you should.

I sat next to a young woman on a plane once who bombarded me for five hours with how she had decided to be born again and so should I. I told her I was glad for her, but I hadn't used up being born the first time.

All I've ever tried to do is play real people.

The one thing I think I've noticed about shows that are supposed to be funny on television is that they've sort of become routinized, so there's an awful lot of mannerisms and joke lines that are sort of there to trigger laughter, rather than give actors a chance to play a moment.

It makes it fun. When an actor plays a character, you want what that character wants. Otherwise it doesn't look authentic. So I really want to defeat Jimmy - I mean Jimmy as the character.

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.

It's not an epitaph. I felt I could look back at my life and get a good story out of it. It's a picture of somebody trying to figure things out. I'm not trying to create some impression about myself. That doesn't interest me.

No, I never thought about my image. It interests me that there are people who do, that they seem to be methodical about it.

I love to watch how scientists' minds work.

Musicals are hard for me because I got thrown out of the glee club in high school, because I couldn't sing in tune at the time. I can sing in tune now, but I have to work really hard on it to make sure that I don't exercise one of my great talents, which is the ability to sing in three keys at the same time.

Achingly funny as it was, Larry Gelbart's writing gave off sparks that turned a hard light on the way we are.

Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You cannot get there by bus, only by hard work, risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you will discover will be wonderful: yourself.

What is beauty, anyway? It's more than something pleasant looking. If it doesn't stop us in our tracks and make us unable to move for a moment, unable to put into words what's closing off the breath in our throats, then maybe it's pretty, but it probably isn't beauty.

War is war and Hell is hell, and if you ask me, War is a lot worse.

When I was in high school, I fell under the spell of that crazy idea that if you're interested in the arts, you can't be interested in science.

In 2003, I almost died of an intestinal blockage when I was on a mountain in Chile, filming a segment for 'Scientific American Frontiers.'

'Never Have Your Dog Stuffed' is really advice to myself, a reminder to myself not to avoid change or uncertainty, but to go with it, to surf into change.

Some of the greatest things, as I understand, they have come about by serendipity, the greatest discoveries.

My background is on the stage, so when I'd write movies, they'd be a lot like plays.

I made my first stage appearance when I was 6 months old.

I'm most at home on the stage.