Quotes from Harry Dean Stanton

I sing and play guitar and harmonica. I've been doing it for a long time.

What did we play in the Harry Dean Stanton Band? It was old blues and country - all covers. I never wrote anything.

For a musician to be good, he has to have humanity and care about the other guy. And as for blues - in a sense, black people have kept this country alive and given us our entire musical heritage.

I can understand why it takes some people a long time to really be a singer. You have to find out, 'Why am I singing? What am I doing this for?' I do it because I enjoy it, and philosophically, music is a catalyst. It's a refining agent.

Molly Ringwald, she's a natural talent. Every girl in this country related to that girl.

I worked with the best directors - Martin Scorsese, John Huston, David Lynch, Alfred Hitchcock. Alfred Hitchcock was great.

I watch television. Game shows - I hate the hosts and the people on them, and I love the questions and the answers.

I was in World War Two at the battle of Okinawa.

I'm not really into religion.

I am not into any religions. I have been mostly influenced by Eastern religions - Taoism, the essence of Hinduism and Buddhism. But my belief is not having any beliefs.

Study up on the Eastern religions. They're the only ones that are realistic. There's no answer, see.

All organized religions are basically the same.

I know little stories that happen to people around me, and I can repeat that in a way that has some color.

I had to decide if I wanted to be a singer or an actor. I was always singing. I thought if I could be an actor, I could do all of it.

The soul is an illusion.

I used to sing when I was six years old. When the family would leave the house, I'd get up on the stool and sing. 'T for Texas, T for Tenessee, T for Thelma, the gal that made a wreck out of me.' I was in love with my babysitter. She was 18. I was six.

I realized early on that if I became an actor, I could play a writer and a sculptor and a painter and be all the things you just don't have time to be in your lifetime. I could get to learn about all of them.

I don't recall what the first record I bought was, but I definitely remember hearing Creedence's 'Born on the Bayou' and going out and buying it. The guitar and drums in that band were really good. I loved the words to the title track, and Fogerty's voice sounded just great.

Silence is the most powerful state.

Singing and acting are actually very similar things. Anyone can sing and anyone can be a film actor. All you have to do is learn.

I've got a pretty iconoclastic attitude about all institutions myself. And I just think the church was corrupted right after Christ was killed.

I was in a movie called 'Twister,' and in it, I had to hit a golf ball off of a roof with a driving wood. The guy who owned the place where we shot showed me how to do it, and I hit the ball about 150 yards.

I was trained on the stage, and I can do stage as well as I can do movies, but I prefer films.

I don't believe in singing lessons. You can sing or you can't.