Quotes

Quotes by James Dean himself:

• "Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today." - James Dean

• "The gratification comes in the doing, not in the results." - James Dean

• "I have made great strides in my craft." - James Dean

• "Take it easy driving, The life you save may be mine." - James Dean

• "I gotta drive fast. I'm not going to be around too long." - James Dean

• "I've got to know everything about everything to be a good director - and that's the goal." - James Dean

• "Acting is wonderful and immediately satisfying, but it is not the end-all, be-all of my existance. My talents lie in directing even more than acting. And beyond direction, my great fear is writting. I can't apply the seat of my pants right now to write-I'm too youthful and silly. But someday." - James Dean

• "To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty; to interpret it his problem; and to express it his dedication. Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that's all you have. Being a good actor isn't easy. Being a man is even harder. I want to be both before I'm done." - James Dean

• "Instead of doing little poems about mice, I did things like 'The Terror Of Death' - the goriest. This made me strange - a little harpy in short pants." - James Dean on performing as a child at family gatherings

• "Acting is the most logical way for people's neuroses to express themselves." - James Dean

• "I used to go out for the cows on a motorcycle. Scared the hell out of them. They'd get running and their udders would start swinging, and they'd lose a quart of milk." - James Dean

• "You've got to live fast; death comes early." - James Dean

• "I'm a serious-minded and intense little devil - terribly guache and so tense that I don't see how people can stay in the same room as me. I know I couldn't tolerate myself." - James Dean

• "I can't divert into being a social human being when I'm working on a hero like Cal, who's essentially demonic." - James Dean

• "Just an easy kind of friendly thing. I respect her. She's untouchable. We're members of totally different castes. You know, she's the kind of girl you put on a shelf and look at. Anyway her old lady (her mother) doesn't like me. Can't say I blame her." - James Dean, on dating actress Pier Angeli

• "No one ever did anything for me, I don't owe anything to anyone." - James Dean

• "People were telling me I behaved like Brando even before I knew who Brando was. I'm not disturbed by the comparison - nor am I flattered." - James Dean

• "An actor must learn all there is to know, experience all there is to experience, or approach that state as closly as possible." - James Dean

• "I try so hard to make people reject me. Why?." - James Dean

• "When you know there is something more to go in a character, and you're not sure what it is, you just got to go out after it. Walk a tightrope." - James Dean to Dennis Hopper

• "Don't 'act.' If you're smoking a cigarette, smoke it. Don't act like you're smoking it." - James Dean to Dennis Hopper

• "My purpose in life does not include a hankering to charm society." - James Dean

• "I don't even want to be 'the best'. I want to grow so tall that nobody can reach me. Not to prove anything, but just to go where you ought to go when you devote your whole life and all you are to one thing." - James Dean

• "Whatever's inside making me what I am, it's like film. Film only works in the dark. Tear it all open and let in the light and you kill it." - James Dean

Quotes by others about James Dean:

• "He's a punk but a helluva talent." - Elia Kazan

• "He was a dabbler." - Photographer Dennis Stock

• "Jimmy was incredibly encouraging and very sweet to me." - Natalie Wood

• "About the boy, James Dean, inasmuch as your impression of him is a good one, we naturally will go along with you. You said he is an odd kid. I hope he isn't too odd as it's getting to the point now that when we make pictures with odd people, the whole machine is thrown out of order. You know it only takes one odd spark plug to make the whole motor miss." - Jack Warner, memo to Elia Kazan, March 10, 1954

• "When he walked into the office, I knew he was right for the role. He was guarded, sullen, suspicious, and he seemed to me to have a great deal of concealed emotion. He looked and spoke like the character in 'East Of Eden'." - Elia Kazan, September 30, 1985