Quotes from Val Kilmer

I think part of my reputation has to do with the difficult roles I've played. Actors do tend to get identified with their characters.

There was such a relationship between the buffalo and the American Indian - the Indians would eat them, live inside their pelts, use every part of the body. There was almost no separation between the people and the animals.

I have two children and they're young yet but all of the children that I know really inspire me.

I'm going to put a museum on my ranch and people keep saying, 'That's a huge idea.' Yeah, it's big, but not bigger than the average big movie. A hundred million dollars in the art world is a substantial amount of cash to do anything. That's maybe a big gallery's total sales for a given year.

There was no one around called 'Val' when I was young, so I wanted to be John or Bill. Now I like it.

I was in love with Tina Goodman since I was three and her parents came popping out of the trash cans. I think it made a big impression on me.

Youth is seen as everything. You don't know anything when you're young. It's great being older, just having a more balanced perspective. I wake up and realise that what seemed to be important last year no longer is. I'm increasingly grateful for every day.

I can safely say that no one who has ever won an Oscar didn't want to win an Oscar.

The good reviews that people have told me about through the years haven't really helped me do my job. So it's kind of like, if your hair turns out right you want to go out, you don't just want to stay in and look in the mirror. That's kind of what reading a review is like to me; it's like reveling in something that's just one night.

Mark Twain is as big as America. He really is.

Mark Twain created a new type of literature and not a lot of people can say that. Not a lot of people can say they're absolutely original and completely self-made.

Mark Twain had a way of telling stories that shifts your consciousness away from labels.

Most films made about the future acquiesce toward death, and I don't want to be told how to define my future.

Again, in Wag the Dog, war has to be declared by an act of congress. But if you go to war, you don't have to declare war. You're just at war and we did that, which is not legal.

My children have absolutely no interest in my fame. They're very sophisticated, and they have a spiritual perspective on material things because we go to church.

It's fun to look at people that are so good at acting that aren't actors, like David Bowie creating a mystique about rock n' roll.

Jim Thompson understood something about the serial killer before the psychology caught up to it, which is that they are detached to it and they do want to get caught.

If you look up the definition of news in the dictionary, it isn't what you watch on TV.

Why do women get paid less money? It doesn't make any sense.

It's fun to look at people that are so good at acting that aren't actors, like David Bowie creating a mystique about rock n' roll. I've listened to 'Ziggy Stardust' as much as any rock n' roll fan - I don't really know what it's about, but it sure is fun to think about David Bowie as this mad creation.

If you're in a hit movie, it's good to be in another hit movie straight away.

My perception is that I've never done anything but work really hard.

In order to be an artist and an actor, like tackling the classics in the theater as well as film, there's lots of discipline, lots of work, physical work put in.

That's the joy of art - it should be dangerous and challenging but it's just art - it's safe.