Viggo Mortensen Quotes
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I campaigned for [Dennis] Kucinich in 2008. I continue to be in touch with him and I really admire him. I think he's very brave and honest - unusually so for a U.S. politician.
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If you're trying to please everyone, then you're not going to make anything that is honestly yours, I don't think, in the long run.
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Walking down the street in any town or city in the world and having people look at you and start talking to you, convinced that they know you as well or better than they do members of their own family, that's just an odd phenomenon. But I mean, I wouldn't say it was a bad thing. It's an interesting thing.
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To be honest, I don't really care about any pope. It's not something I think about much, to be quite honest with you.
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I've never been conscious of having any real career plan, and I do not have a wish-list of actors, directors, screenwriters, or cameramen I'm hoping to work with. Life, I feel, has a way of leading us to the right situations and people, or at least to interesting ones.
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I'm optimistic about people and about the planet and about nature. I think it's resilient, like people are.
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It's easy to get depressed and think, "Well, what's the point?" But it's the same as, "Well, we're all going to die, so what's the point in brushing my teeth or even saying hello to anyone or obeying traffic lights." You can do that, but that's certainly not going to take you anywhere.
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Photography, painting or poetry - those are just extensions of me, how I perceive things; they are my way of communicating.
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Anyone can identify with those moments in life where circumstances or people inform us that we've strayed from the path of our better nature and intentions. We know what that's like, and we resist it - so as not to feel like we're bad people.
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I'm an optimist; I always hope that each new script is going to be a great story.
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What art does is it makes you feel alive and makes you feel like you're connected.
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The Holocaust movie is almost a genre in itself these days.
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On a practical level, poetry isn't something anybody has really made a great living at. I might sell some books and, once in a while, someone might pay to hear me read.
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Speaking more than one language and living in a multicultural family and environment did not seem like anything but what it was: the world I lived in.
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If in my twenties I'd gotten one of the two-dozen roles that I did screen tests for and almost got, I think I would have become bored with the awards circuit, the whole hype machine.
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If you're not optimistic on some level, then you've given up.
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You know, real life doesn't just suddenly resolve itself. You have to keep working at it.
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Those who have the power and should be the most responsible are often the least responsible.
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I really enjoyed working with New Zealanders as crew members, as teammates. They're great, and it's a beautiful country. It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, and I've traveled quite a bit.
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Toronto Film Festival is one of those festivals where there are 400 movies, and unless you have a distributor who is super confident and puts a lot of money into it, sometimes movies can go unwatched or unnoticed.
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I think the older you get the harder it is to [lose] probably. Your metabolism slows down, whatever, but I'm a pretty active person.
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I pursue the things I do because I'm interested in them.
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I have friends who I get along with who I know get very uncomfortable being alone, unless they're with people, talking all the time. Whether it's on the phone, or in person, they're never by themselves. Whereas I could be alone for months.
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America is an empire in decay. But we don't have to lash out and do damage on the way down. We can reverse some of the damage we've done. It's possible.
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At the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century in Austria, there was a lot of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism in Austria was much more pervasive than in Germany. And Austrians took to Nazi ideas and anti-Semitism much more readily than Germans did, really.
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Because of the internet, satellite TV, and the digital world, you can stay in touch, you can learn about other people from a young age.
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In terms of the movie business, being in a 'Lord of the Rings' has given me more interesting options as work.
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I have a roof over my head. I had a breakfast, and a lot of people in the world can't say that. I'm not going to complain about being interviewed.
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In a movie, you're raw material, just a hue of some color and the director makes the painting.
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This basic thing I always do: 'What happened between the character's birth, and page one of the script?' Anything that's not in the story, I'll fill in the blanks.
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