Quotes by Alan Rickman

“Acting is about giving something away, handing yourself over to whatever role you are asked to play. Im not hiding or escaping or seeking anonymity. I reserve the right not to have a rubber stamp on my forehead saying this is who I am. Because who I am gets in the way of people looking innocently at the parts I play.”

“I do take my work seriously and the way to do that is not to take yourself too seriously.”

“Calling this production postponed does not disguise the fact that it has been cancelled.”

“I have a love/hate relationship with white silk.”

“I can only guess at the pressures of funding an independent theater company in New York, but calling this production postponed does not disguise the fact that it has been canceled. This is censorship born out of fear, and the New York Theatre Workshop, the Royal Court, New York audiences--all of us are the losers.”

“To love, for us men, is to clasp one woman with our arms, feeling that she lives and breathes just as we do, suffers as we do, thinks with us, loves with us, and, above all, sins with us.”

Mellow doesnt describe me. Im hungry every day.

I mean, language fascinates me anyway, and different words have different energies and you can change the whole drive of a sentence.

I want to swim in both directions at once. Desire success, court failure.

Those of you who are not aware of my brilliant career as a stand up comic, Im not aware of it either so we might well wonder what were doing here.

Talent is an accident of genes, and a responsibility.

Actors are agents of change. A film, a piece of theater, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world.

I love perfumes. Every morning when my girlfriend and I come down to the courtyard in our block of flats were assailed by the most delicious scent - jasmine round a doorway. It almost makes me swoon.

The point about a great story is that its got a beginning, a middle and end.

I have every sympathy for writers. Its a mystery to me what they do. I can edit. I can cross out and say, Im not saying that or, How about we move this to here? Wouldnt that make that bit of the story better? But where any of it comes from is beyond me. I will never write a play or a novel.

One longs for a director with a sense of imagination.

I have a love-hate relationship with white silk.

Im still living the life where you get home and open the fridge and theres half a pot of yogurt and a half a can of flat Coca-Cola.

I always feel that when I come to Edinburgh, in many ways I am coming home.

It would be wonderful to think that the future is unknown and sort of surprising.