Mike Nichols Quotes

There’s nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you’re meant to do. It’s like falling in love.

Mike Nichols

Falling In Love, Fall, Astonishment

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I love to take actors to a place where they open a vein. That’s the job. The key is that I make it safe for them to open the vein.

Mike Nichols

Jobs, Keys, Veins

"Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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The only safe thing is to take a chance. Play safe and you are dead. Taking risks is the essence of good work, and the difference between safe and bold can only be defined by yourself since no one else knows for what you are hoping when you embark on anything.

Mike Nichols

Essence, Play, Differences

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A movie is like a person. Either you trust it or you don't.

Mike Nichols

Persons

"Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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There's nothing in the American dream about character. It's a serious flaw.

Mike Nichols

Dream, Character, Serious

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The unconscious is our best collaborator.

Mike Nichols

Consciousness, Unconscious, Collaborators

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No doubt you are as alarmed as I by the tragic decline in America's language skills. If 10 people read the following sentence: Two tanker trucks has just overturned in Alaska, spilling a totel of 10,000 gallons of beer onto a highway. two would find an error in subject-verb agreement, two would find an error in spelling, and six would find a sponge and drive north.

Mike Nichols

Beer, Agreement, Skills

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Any good movie is filled with secrets.

Mike Nichols

Secret, Good Movie, Filled

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I love the editing process of making movies. I just wish that life had one.

Mike Nichols

Editing, Wish, Process

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I have never understood people dividing things into dramas and comedies.

Mike Nichols

Drama, People, Comedy

"Award-winning director Mike Nichols dies at 83" by Victoria Fleischer, www.pbs.org. November 20, 2014.

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Directing is mystifying. It's a long, long, skid on an icy road, and you do the best you can trying to stay on the road... If you're still here when you come out of the spin, it's a relief. But you've got to have the terror if you're going to do anything worthwhile.

Mike Nichols

Long, Trying, Relief

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The only safe thing in filmmaking is to take a chance.

Mike Nichols

Safe, Chance, Take A Chance

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In making movies, time is so short-because it is so expensive-that we tend to neglect the place from which the best ideas come, namely that part of ourselves that dreams. The unconscious is our best collaborator.

Mike Nichols

Dream, Writing, Ideas

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I came to love silence, because it's so rare, and it's now my favorite aural condition.

Mike Nichols

Silence, My Favorite, Conditions

"Mike Nichols, Master of Invisibility" by Charles Mcgrath, www.nytimes.com. April 10, 2009.

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Take off all your clothes and walk down the street waving a machete and firing an Uzi, and terrified citizens will phone the police and report, There's a naked person outside!

Mike Nichols

Phones, Civilization, Clothes

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That seems to me the greatest American danger we're all in, that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it.

Mike Nichols

Alive, Appearance, Danger

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Being with an insanely jealous person is like being in the room with a dead mammoth.

Mike Nichols

Jealousy, Jealous, Rooms

"Mike Nichols: The Special Risks And Rewards Of The Director's Art" by Barbara Gelb, www.nytimes.com. May 27, 1984.

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I was just trying to make a nice little movie... It wasn't until I saw it all put together that I realized this was something remarkable.

Mike Nichols

Nice, Trying, Together

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It's the hardest thing on earth to like yourself, and then when you do, it's a catastrophe. I mean, the people I know who like themselves - I don't want to see them!

Mike Nichols

Mean, People, Earth

"Waiting for the Smile". Interview with Sam Kashner, Jessica Diehl, www.vanityfair.com. April 2012.

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If you want to be a legend, God help you, it's so easy. You just do one thing. You can be the master of suspense, say. But if you want to be as invisible as is practical, then it's fun to do a lot of different things.

Mike Nichols

Fun, Different, Suspense

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Yes. The whole point about laughter is it's like mercury: you can't catch it, you can't catch what motivates it - that's why it's funny.

Mike Nichols

Laughter, Mercury, Whole

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Will we allow the decline of our language-the language of Shakespeare, Shaw and Steinbeck? Will we abuse our precious gift of communication? Will we bite our mother tongue with the teeth of indifference, crushing the taste buds of clarity and, without prompt application of the antiseptic of education, causing the gangrene of strained metaphors? Stand up, America, and let me hear your answer: Ain't no way, dude!

Mike Nichols

Crush, Mother, Communication

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All the theories that acting is reacting to imaginary circumstances as though they are real, and directing is turning psychology into behavior, those are all stabs at something that can't be taught. All the great actors can't talk about what they do, and they don't want to begin to talk about it. They just do it.

Mike Nichols

Real, Psychology, Theatre

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Nerves provide me with energy... It's when I don't have them, when I feel at ease, that's when I get worried.

Mike Nichols

Nerves, Ease, Energy

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Jewish introspection and Jewish humor is a way of surviving . . . if you're not handsome and you're not athletic and you're not rich, there's still one last hope with girls, which is being funny.

Mike Nichols

Girl, Athletic, Handsome

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Mike Nichols

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Born: November 6, 1931
Died: November 19, 2014
Occupation: Film director
Cite this Page: Citation

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