Harry Dean Stanton quotes

Born
July 14, 1926 West Irvine, Kentucky, U.S.

Died
September 15, 2017.

Occupation
Actor, musician.

Harry Dean Stanton was an American actor, musician, and singer.

I sing and play guitar and harmonica. I’ve been doing it for a long time.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I was trained on the stage, and I can do stage as well as I can do movies, but I prefer films.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I was in World War Two at the battle of Okinawa.
– Harry Dean Stanton

You can do stuff onstage that you can’t do offstage. You can be angry as hell and enraged and get away with it onstage, but not off.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I like to do nothing.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I have a good ear for languages.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I worked with the best directors – Martin Scorsese, John Huston, David Lynch, Alfred Hitchcock. Alfred Hitchcock was great.
– Harry Dean Stanton

Casting is a convoluted kind of trip. No one likes to be typed – even if you’re a cab driver, or whatever you do.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I just want to say, good night, sweet prince, may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I’m just dealing with what’s happening, with what is. Joy, happiness, good, bad, all those terms are meaningless to me.
– Harry Dean Stanton

‘Pretty In Pink’ was a huge hit for me.
– Harry Dean Stanton

Do nothing. Do nothing. Let it happen. Don’t try.
– Harry Dean Stanton

There is no self.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I’m not really into religion.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I know little stories that happen to people around me, and I can repeat that in a way that has some color.
– Harry Dean Stanton

The soul is an illusion.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I grew up Southern Baptist. In the Bible Belt.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I have to wait and see what happens. Because nobody’s in charge.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I’ve received a lot of compliments. People come right up to me on the street. They recognize me.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I’ve never been ambitious about recording.
– Harry Dean Stanton

Silence is the most powerful state.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I’ve had offers that could’ve made me much richer and much more famous than I am.
– Harry Dean Stanton

Heisenberg, Max Plank and Einstein, they all agreed that science could not solve the mystery of the universe.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I would’ve preferred to blossom earlier in life.
– Harry Dean Stanton

Everything changes every day.
– Harry Dean Stanton

The void, the concept of nothingness, is terrifying to most people on the planet. And I get anxiety attacks myself. I know the fear of that void. You have to learn to die before you die. You give up, surrender to the void, to nothingness.
– Harry Dean Stanton

The most terrifying thing for most everybody in the whole Western World is to take responsibility for your own life and to experience real freedom.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I don’t believe in singing lessons. You can sing or you can’t.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I’ve been blessed. I’ve worked with a lot of good people.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I’ve avoided success artfully.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I made it a point not to graduate. I thought that was a positive, independent kind of statement.
– Harry Dean Stanton

People know you as an actor, and labels are so comfortable for people. That syndrome is always hard to get past.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I realized early on that if I became an actor, I could play a writer and a sculptor and a painter and be all the things you just don’t have time to be in your lifetime. I could get to learn about all of them.
– Harry Dean Stanton

California is full of Mexican culture and Mexican music.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I do all the classics, like Dylan, Kristofferson, Jimmy Reed, Mexican mariachi songs, some jazz songs from the ’30s. Cole Porter’s ‘Begin the Beguine,’ that’s one of my favorites.
– Harry Dean Stanton

You want people walking away from the conversation with some kernel of wisdom or some kind of impact.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I change every day. I’m still changing.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I took speech training. I took a few voice lessons in college.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I think I’m blessed with a pretty tough psyche.
– Harry Dean Stanton

I think every actor wants to play those big parts. In the very first play I ever did, I remember understanding all the characters in it. I always felt I could play anyone.
– Harry Dean Stanton

Nothing is important.
– Harry Dean Stanton