Viggo Mortensen Quotes

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.

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.

I have no idea what ‘method actor’ means.

As a kid I read Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and a few others. As an adult have admired Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings and notebooks.

One of the most recent things we did [in Perceval Press] is a reissue of a fantastic documentary about Russian prison tattoo culture by Alix Lambert called The Mark of Cain. We’ve done books from Twilight of Empire, that actually has forewords by Howard Zinn and Dennis Kucinich and others, to books of poetry, photography, painting – all kinds of books.

People like to pigeonhole you. It’s easier.

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.

When I was 11, I moved to the United States with my two brothers and my mom. We moved to northern New York, up near the Canadian border, from Argentina, and there was nobody there that spoke Spanish, and because there was no internet at the time, not even cable TV yet, I lost the connection with my childhood friends and the culture I had been brought up with for my first decade completely.

Looking at acting, in the movies or the theater, and the way I like to look at it, it’s just an extension of childhood play… Kids play and imagine in a very intense fashion and they don’t need any director telling them You really have to believe in it. They believe in it completely.

In principle, I think the idea of rewarding a good effort is interesting, but movies are generally different from each other as are performances and the conditions on how the performances are given and how they’re edited and so forth.

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.

There’s no sense in doing something, especially if it’s a hard job, if you can’t have a little fun.