I've always believed that service to others is rent we pay for our time on this planet.
I look at everything in an artistic way.
I wouldn't be caught dead marrying a woman old enough to be my wife.
Every line, everything you do in life, should have a motive and a reason. Every one of us should have a motive and a reason, most of the time, to accomplish all the things that we want in life.
If you don't know your gift, you've got no lift.
You wanna know the secret of life? The saliva of young girls.
I was born in and worked in a period that could be called enviable.
Acting is something that we all practice at some time in our lives. We're different people to our mothers, fathers, our friends, people that we hung out together with, people that didn't like us or we didn't like them. We readjust ourselves.
Someone said to me, "Hey, what's it like kissing Marilyn Monroe?" I said, "It's like kissing Hitler. What are you doing asking me such a stupid question?"
Women are beginning to lose their identity. They have jumped with teeth clenched, fists braced and eyes aglow, into the competitive man's world. They're losing the vibrant quality of femininity, the aura of mystery.
While you're doing it, you don't really know what you're doing.
Its not age as much as the experiences I have had.
Like an opera singer, I am able to sing out my song in paint.
I enlisted when I was a boy. The Navy looked after me like my mother. It fed me, took care of me and gave me wonderful opportunities.
Marilyn Monro wasn't the brightest person in the world - that didn't make a difference one way or the other - but she was giving and kind. And that's what got her in trouble. She was so giving and kind to all of these people she met that she found herself doing these things that she didn't want to do.
I was a handsome boy, a very handsome young man, bright blue eyes, mmm. I would make trucks skid off the road. Anyway, girls were never a problem; the problem was me. But a lot of guys didn't like me because I made it look so easy, but it wasn't easy for me or anybody. When you're 24, it's not easy. You haven't reached anywhere that you want to be, so my looks helped me get in the movies, and I'm privileged that my parents came up with what I look like. What they did I'll never know and I don't care.
Jack Lemmon is my best friend and he's a very wonderful actor. A very talented, very funny man. A lovely man. We're like brothers! We are gifts to each other. He's such a fun personality. There will only ever be one Jack Lemmon.
My parents were Hungarian immigrants; my father was a tailor and we lived in the back of a tailor store. And that was my first inkling of what it was like to be raised in America. It had a profound effect on me - I saw different people coming in all the time with different attitudes and I liked it. And as I grew older, I found that I was able to use something inside of me to get some sympathy if I wanted it. I used to shine shoes, and I would use a waif-like look. I'd get a dime and I'd be as happy as could be.
I will always remember this summer day in Paris, when I was to perform a great acrobatic move. I can still see myself stepping on the ring of a packed circus along real performers.
I feel strongly that we, all of us, are brothers and sisters, and nothing interferes with that except our education, our background, where we grew up and how we should do it. If you eliminated all those negatives and gave us an open view of what life would be like, it would be different.
The service meant so much to me. You don't know privileged I feel and how lucky I am to have served.
My whole world before I joined the Navy was my neighborhood in the Bronx.
Painting is much more than therapy to me its a way of life.
It is for the latter that I always wanted to be an actor: to play characters who are always on the move.
I used to be good friends with my depression, saying oh I'm so depressed, or life is terrible.
