Quotes from James Earl Jones

There's nothing I would retire for, so I won't retire.

No one asked me to be an actor, so no one owed me. There was no entitlement.

I knew real show business from my father, who had been an actor since he left the world of boxing.

Stuttering is painful. In Sunday school, I'd try to read my lessons, and the children behind me were falling on the floor with laughter.

I don't ever want to be a sentimentalist. I prefer to be a realist. I'm not a romantic really.

Acting is not about anything romantic, not even fantasy, although you do create fantasy.

The arts have always been an important ingredient to the health of a nation, but we haven't gotten there yet.

It has to be real, and I think a lot of the problems we have as a society is because we don't acknowledge that family is important, and it has to be people who are present, you know, and mothers and fathers, both are not present enough with children.

And nothing embittered me, which is important, because I think ethnic people and women in this society can end up being embittered because of the lack of affirmative action, you know.

I agree with my father, Albert Einstein, don't believe every quote you read on the internet.

You sang in church, you know, and you didn't act at all. You tried not to act, you tried to tell the truth. The idea of being a troubadour on the road singing for your supper was very disturbing to him.

We used to be "shiftless and lazy," now we're "fearsome and awesome." I think the black man should take pride in that.

When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language.

You cannot be an actor like I am and not have been in some of the worst movies like I have. But I stand before you deeply honored, mighty grateful and just plain gobsmacked.

Actors never discuss future plans.

I'd like to film a British commercial; they're better than American ones.

So in my junior year, I switched to the drama department.

I think stutterers are funny. And I know it's rude and politically incorrect to laugh at stutterers. But I think it is okay because I know why they're funny. They make people nervous. People think, when on earth are they going to get the word out, so they start laughing out of their own nervousness.

Your own need to be shines out of any dream or creation you imagine.

Before my grandpa built his own church, we went to the neighboring town, and it was a white community. You know, up north, mostly middle European people and Indians, Chippewa Indians. We were welcome to that church, but once we got in, they didn't know what to do with us.

And it was the idea that you can do a play - like a Shakespeare play, or any well-written play, Arthur Miller, whatever - and say things you could never imagine saying, never imagine thinking in your own life.

So I was determined to use my last two years in college doing something I thought I would enjoy, which was acting. And it was probably because there was girls over in the drama school too, you know?

Don't you try and go through life worried if someone had liked you or not. You best make sure that they are doing right by you.

Denzel Washington, Sidney Poitier, Robert Redford, Tom Cruise: those guys have well-planned careers. I'm just on a journey. Wherever I run across a job, I say, 'Okay, I'll do that.'