Quotes from William Hurt

We'd like to prearrange our life on all levels. We'd prefer it to be scripted. But it's not.

The simple fact of existence, of being aware that you are aware; this to me is the most astounding fact.

I don't want my children to have to wade through the crap to get to the cream, you know. I want them to be aware that I struggled to live with and tell my truth, and that it was a decent thing.

I'm coming from the notion that acting is an art. It is not a business. It is about building characters, not about selling personalities.

You can only sit on the frustration of wanting to express something for so long.

I have never worked with anyone who I hold in higher esteem than Chris Menges. He's an absolute, bona fide, authentic artist.

The achievement is appreciation. Your ability to be surprised and awed by beauty!

Sometimes people call me a success for all the reasons that make me think I'm a failure.

Being famous is not something that would make me feel successful - unless one was striving for mediocrity.

But I am not going to live for ever. And the more I know it, the more amazed I am by being here at all.

Being a father, being a friend, those are the things that make me feel successful.

The thing is, I don't believe in most of what's done. The amount of financial and imaginative energy that's put into mediocrity is just amazing which I find to be fundamentally offensive as a human being.

Heroes to me are guys that sit in libraries. They absorb knowledge and then the risks they take are calculated on the basis of the courage it took to become replete with knowledge.

Great risks come in long term, tremendously assiduous, very courageous study.

I think acting can bring you closer to yourself and help you understand other people.

Defeating fear is not a light switch. For most of us, it's daily work.

I live in the county where my mother was born and buried.

I'm not there to tailor the role to me: I'm there to tailor me to the role. That guarantees me something, a precious thing, which is creativity. I'm guaranteed that I will have a creative experience, because I will go to it, not demand that it comes to me.

If you don't exercise, you don't stay strong. I like to work with talented people.

Heroes to me are guys that sit in libraries. They absorb knowledge and then the risks they take are calculated on the basis of the courage it took to become replete with knowledge.

I demand minimal for paid rehearsal and not always six weeks either.

David Cronenberg knows what we actors do as artists.

The enemies of acting are mood and attitude and other general homogenized disruptive entities. Whereas acting is about action - doing - and unless you can figure out a way to craft in an imaginative reality to which you don't submit, you're going to be out of control. You'll flip out. The job is to be surprised.

Fame... it's been a challenge, let's put it that way. It's a privilege and a responsibility, and I'm not sure I carried the responsibility well at times, which is embarrassing. And I've had to look and be disappointed in myself occasionally for how I behaved in some circumstances.