Quotes from Alan Rickman

It would be wonderful to think that the future is unknown and sort of surprising.

Maverick is a word which appeals to me more than misfit. Maverick is active, misfit is passive.

I mean, language fascinates me anyway, and different words have different energies and you can change the whole drive of a sentence.

I'm very aware that when one is acting in the theater, you do become kind of animal about it. And you're reliant on instincts rather than tact a lot of the time.

If you spend any time in Los Angeles, there's only one topic of conversation.

A lot of the time I hate the theater. You think, 'I have to climb Mount Everest, again, tonight.' Oh, the theater is a scary place to be.

I approach every part I'm asked to do and decide to do from exactly the same angle: who is this person, what does he want, how does he attempt to get it, and what happens to him when he doesn't get it, or if he does?

I have a love-hate relationship with white silk.

You try to find things that are challenging and interesting and hopefully it will be the same to the audience.

I think worrying things are going on in England - a real apathy.

I have a photograph at home of Fred Astaire from the knees down with his feet crossed. It's kind of inspiring because it reminds me his feet were bleeding at the end of rehearsals. Yet when you watch him, all you see is freedom. It's a reminder of what the job is about in general, not just being in musicals.

One longs for a director with a sense of imagination.

Market forces impose certain rules before a film can actually get made.

I have every sympathy for writers. It's a mystery to me what they do. I can edit. I can cross out and say, 'I'm not saying that' or, 'How about we move this to here? Wouldn't that make that bit of the story better?' But where any of it comes from is beyond me. I will never write a play or a novel.

I was a student in London in the '70s, so CBGB really wasn't on my radar at all. Obviously, I was aware of the emergence of the Police in England and as an art student, I was very aware of David Byrne, but I suppose my musical taste at that time certainly didn't stretch towards the Dead Boys or the Ramones.

Nothing gives me as much pleasure as travelling. I love getting on trains and boats and planes.

The directors you trust the most are the ones, when you ask them a question, they've got the guts to say, 'I don't know.'

All I want to see from an actor is the intensity and accuracy of their listening.

If you could build a house on a trampoline, that would suit me fine.

On film you put all your energies into a single glance.

I love working in New York theater.

Los Angeles is not a town full of airheads. There's a great deal of wonderful energy there. They say 'yes' to things; not like the endless 'nos' and 'hrrumphs' you get in England!

On the screen were some flashback shots of Daniel, Emma and Rupert from ten years ago. They were 12. I have also recently returned from New York, and while I was there, I saw Daniel singing and dancing (brilliantly) on Broadway. A lifetime seems to have passed in minutes.

I think the thing about film is, as it gets proved by a lot of young filmmakers now, that the medium will just go on reinventing itself, and so you just hope to be a part of that and not a part of some kind of endless regurgitation or 'Here I am doing what you know I do' kind of thing.