Quotes from Montgomery Clift

Failure and its accompanying misery is for the artist his most vital source of creative energy.

I have enough money to get by. I'm not independently wealthy, just independently lazy, I suppose.

Noah, from 'The Young Lions' (1958), was the best performance of my life. I couldn't have given more of myself. I'll never be able to do it again. Never.

Look, if you're playing Romeo and your Juliet is a pig, you find something you can love about pigs!

The only line that's wrong in Shakespeare is 'holding a mirror up to nature.' You hold a magnifying glass up to nature. As an actor you just enlarge it enough so that your audience can identify with the situation. If it were a mirror, we would have no art.

A man should be what he can do.

The closer we come to the negative, to death, the more we blossom.

Look, I'm not odd. I'm just trying to be an actor; not a movie star, an actor.

James Dean's death had a profound effect on me. The instant I heard about it, I vomited. I don't know why.

Failure and its accompanying misery is for the artist his most vital source of creative energy.