Quotes

[on acting] Come to work on time, know your lines and don't bump into the other actors.

[on drinking] Hell, I used to take two-week lunch hours!

I couldn't be a director because I couldn't put up with the actors. I don't have the patience. Why, I'd probably kill the actors. Not to mention some of the beautiful actresses.

[on being asked why he was always billed above long-time companion Katharine Hepburn in their films together] Because this is a movie, you chowderhead, not a lifeboat!

The kids keep telling me I should try this new "Method Acting" but I'm too old, I'm too tired and I'm too talented to care.

[on why he never left his wife for Katharine Hepburn] I can get a divorce whenever I want to. But my wife and Kate like things just as they are.

This mug of mine is as plain as a barn door. Why should people pay 35 cents to look at it?

I'm disappointed in acting as a craft. I want everything to go back to Orson Welles and fake noses and changing your voice. It's become so much about personality.

It is up to us to give ourselves recognition. If we wait for it to come from others, we feel resentful when it doesn't, and when it does, we may well reject it.

Even when my throat is completely tired out from acting, Luckies [Lucky Strike cigarettes] still get along with it fine.

There were times when my pants were so thin, I could sit on a dime and know if it was heads or tails.

The physical labor actors have to do wouldn't tax an embryo.

Write anything you want about me. Make up something. Hell, I don't care.

Why do actors think they're so Goddamn important? They're not. Acting is not an important job in the scheme of things. Plumbing is.

Actors have no damn place in politics, period.

[on Jean Harlow] A square shooter if ever there was one.

[on why actors should avoid political activism] Remember who shot [Abraham Lincoln].

[To Ernest Hemingway at dinner in the Stork Club] Sometimes I think life is a terminal illness.

[1962 interview] The only thing an actor has to offer a director and finally an audience is his instinct. That's all.

[on acting] It's never been very demanding. It doesn't require much brainwork. Acting is not the noblest profession in the world, but there are things lower than acting. Not many, mind you--but politicians give you something to look down on from time to time.

[in a 1962 interview] I'm Spencer Tracy with some deference to the character. When a person says he's an actor--he's a personality. The whole idea is to show your personality. There are people who are much better technically, but who cares? Nobody cares.

[asked what he looked for in a potential script] Days off.