Quotes from Philip Seymour Hoffman

I think you should be serious about what you do because this is it. This is the only life you've got.

Creating something is all about problem-solving.

I think directors should be confident in their leadership capabilities. I think directors should be confident in what they want to do.

To be fair to my dad, he is one of the brightest men I've ever met.

I've seen a lot of friends who have a lot of great projects, whether it's a script or a play or whatever, and it is a great project and they have great people involved, and they can't make it.

There's a period of time in your life when I kind of look back, and I'm like, was I happy, or was I just not aware?

I have a fine level of recognition in the business and among the acting community now, so I consider myself one of the lucky ones. If I didn't think that, there would be something wrong with me. I'm grateful and thankful for what I've got.

Well, in the theater, I think you're actually more responsible for what is going on onstage as a director than you are in film.

Life's pretty funny when you're objectively on the outside looking at it.

I like so many different kinds of music just because all I did was listen to the radio as a kid.

My girlfriend's a costume designer in the theater.

I think therapy is a helpful thing. I think everyone knows it. You do it for your life, you do it for yourself, because you want to explore some things, and get at the bottom of some things. It's about your life, the quality of your life.

The size of my head though is pretty abnormal.

Life is short. Time is short. As we get older, time does quicken. It's long, and it's long pertaining to that thought, that the past is not done with you because you can't rid of it.

There's nothing risky in talking about your personal life. People do it all the time.

In life, do you ever really know if you're missing an opportunity? No, you really don't.

There are characters in movies who I call 'film characters.' They don't exist in real life. They exist to play out a scenario. They can be in fantastic films, but they are not real characters; what happens to them is not lifelike.

The idea that you have a vision of what you're supposed to be, or going to be, or where your kids are going to be - and that that doesn't work out - is always going to be something that's going to affect people and move people.

People aren't going to throw the kind of money at certain people that they used to.

The film is made in the editing room. The shooting of the film is about shopping, almost. It's like going to get all the ingredients together, and you've got to make sure before you leave the store that you got all the ingredients. And then you take those ingredients and you can make a good cake - or not.

Directing is a really kind of amazing thing, because you're helping others and, in the middle of that, you have to worry about yourself.

You have to understand that crew members make movies so they're seeing a lot of actors all the time in their career acting.

Plays never feel like the right thing to do at the time.

It's hard for anybody who works a lot and has children. But I wouldn't trade it for anything.