Quotes from Philip Seymour Hoffman

My mother's a staunch feminist, so I grew up with very strong feminist messages. As a result, I battled her in my teenage years because my image of being a man was a deformed one.

The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool.

I have so much empathy for these young actors that are 19 and all of a sudden they're beautiful and famous and rich. I'm like, 'Oh my God, I'd be dead.'

I think good art, if I could be pretentious enough to say, I think good art deals with the micro to explain the macro.

Sometimes I have a great day of filming and sometimes the theater strikes me better. It just depends.

I would definitely say pleasure is not happiness. Because I think I kill pleasure. Like I take too much of it in, and therefore make it un-pleasurable, like too much coffee, and you're miserable.

I think you gotta have an honesty and a humility about human nature and that it's not about you at the end of the day.

Sometimes being an actor is like being some kind of detective where you're on the search for a secret that will unlock the character.

I try not to plan that too much.

I got into plays in high school then I ended up going to college for it.

If I don't feel like I'm doing the job well, and I don't know how to get there, or I'm too scared, or whatever, I'm not a happy guy and I'm not pleasant. I'm not pleasant to be around.

I didn't really buy LPs or go to concerts.

Film's hard when you don't have any relationship with the director at all and you just show up. Then you really are just a gun for hire.

I think part of why I have so many books around me and why I read every day is because I mythologize the writer. I don't do that with any other artists.

Books … they're kind of a compulsion for me. To find a great bookstore is a great thing.

There is no pleasure that I haven't made myself sick on.

Creating anything is hard.

I've never been on a cruise.

One person's religion is another person's cult.

You can look at anything as a cult. Churches are cults in their own way.

I didn't go out looking for negative characters; I went out looking for people who have a struggle and a fight to tackle. That's what interests me.

Learning how to die is therefore learning how to live.

The weight comes off, you know? If you stop with the bread and the pie, it really does. It really works.

My ideal weight is 205, actually.