Quotes from John Cusack

I kept saying that I'd never live in L.A., and I didn't think I would. But that's where the work is, and I ended up making a lot of friends there, and my old friends moved out to Los Angeles too. And also, I think when you're famous, its hard to live in a small town.

I think when you get to the point where you don't need to be in love, then you could be in love. You have to just be OK with yourself-and that's a long process.

The British keep employing me, and that makes me like them. It also makes me think they're very intelligent.

I think poets tell better history than historians. Historians lie all the time but the poets can get to truth of it.

I love these movies where it's just about the film. You don't have my face on the poster. It's all about the movie. I like that.

I just love the process of working with other actors.

I feel like I'm a filmmaker; I don't feel I need to yell action and cut.

New York's like a boxing match. In Hollywood, it's like a Fellini movie or something.

Roy, the guy I play in 'The Grifters,' is a guy who had a very bleak life. His mother had him at 13, and then when she was 17 or 18 and he was 4 or 5, they were trapped in a small Texas town somewhere, and she was ready to do anything to get out.

I try not to dwell on the past. I'm not a big go-back-and-try-to-relive-your-past kinda person.

Kitsch is more dangerous than it looks when taken to the extreme.

I'm definitely nostalgic about the music of my youth; The Clash and Fishbone and that whole music scene. I still have all that music to this day. There was some great music going on in the late 70s and 80s.

The people who say they're for democracy want nothing to do with democracy.

Of course, I think it is legitimate for the Commander-in-Chief to be concerned for the safety of his soldiers.

Good actors can sort of see into people and immediately you have a chemistry with them or not. It's like an affair with no mess.

Hitler was so modern, in that he was obsessed with being famous. He was caught up with this rush to be have achieved greatness before turning 30.

We've got to force the Democrats to get a spine. If they don't want to have a spine, we should throw them out. If they don't want to stand up for the rule of law, then I'm not a Democrat.

I think that Poe is so resonant because he represents that part of us that is in misery or sorrowful or wants to explore the darkness. He wrote a great story called 'The Imp of the Perverse' about the instinct towards self-destruction. Poe is the godfather of Goth literature and that whole movement.

But, you know, I'm sorry, I think democracy requires participation. I mean, I don't want to proselytize but I do feel some sort of duty to participate in the process in some way other than just blindly getting behind a political party.

I think good actors can sort of see into people and immediately you have a chemistry with them or not. It's like an affair with no mess. You don't actually consummate it, but you get to pretend, imagine what it would be like.

I like the George Romero films, which were really great, social satire movies; really twisted.

It seems to me that one thing people do over and over again is try to figure out how to get married, stay married, fall in love, how to rekindle all this stuff. It seems to me to be a pretty eternal theme so I don't know if you can get typecast from making movies about men relating to women. It seems to be what is going on on the planet a lot.

Art is spiritual.

Being on a movie set is like one long financial crisis.