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All Quotes by author - Brian Dennehy
" At 13, I was a big, totally uncoordinated, hopeless football player. I responded to somebody else's rules, and I stayed just good enough to get a scholarship to Columbia, which was looking for scholar-athletes. "
Rules
Enough
Football
" Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that morality is not just a matter of opinion. "
Me
Matter
Opinion
" From 1965 to 1974, I served the best possible apprenticeship for an actor. I learned firsthand how a truck driver lives, what a bartender does, how a salesman thinks. I had to make a life inside those jobs, not just pretend. "
Possible
Life
Best
" I come from an Irish Catholic family, and hell-raising is part of the DNA. "
Part
Family
DNA
" If I could transform my stage life to the movies, I'd be Jack Nicholson. "
Stage
Life
Jack
" If you're sixty-something, pushing 70, the chances of you getting a tremendously fascinating part in the movies are very low, as to be almost negligible, or even in television. But in the theatre, there are still things to do, very interesting, very profound things. "
Theatre
You
Interesting
" I idolize Gene Hackman. He is not a natural star, not an incandescent personality like Jack Nicholson, but he makes luminous the problems of being an ordinary man in an extraordinary situation. "
Problems
Man
Personality
" I lied about serving in Vietnam, and I'm sorry. I did not mean to take away from the actions and the sacrifices of the ones who did really serve there... I did steal valor. That was very wrong of me. There is no real excuse for that. "
Sorry
Me
Wrong
" I like sports. I'm a big football fan. When I was a kid, I was a... I don't even know how to describe it... I was an obsessed Brooklyn Dodgers fan. And I think when they left Brooklyn, which was simultaneous with me starting college, everything changed, and I haven't had the same passion for sports. "
Me
Football
College
" I'm not in the movie business anymore, and hardly any 70 year olds are. I always ask the producers: 'Are there no 70-year old vampires?' Apparently there are not - or even zombies for that matter. I guess they all get eaten. "
Old
Year
Ask
" I'm not one of these people who likes to do as little as possible. I really do feel the hot breath of time on the back of my neck these days. And there are certain things I want to do before my time is up. "
Want
Hot
Time
" In this business, you have a hierarchy of stars. Russell Crowe, Tom Hanks - you name 'em, they can play any part they want. Guys like me who are somewhere down in the middle of the pack, that's a different story. I can do things in the theater that I can't do anyplace else. "
Stars
Business
Me
" I remember playing John Wayne Gacy, serial killer, very sick, neurotic, screwed-up guy. You know what? There's a part of me there, too, and you explore that. "
You
Sick
Explore
" It'd be very difficult to cast me as a ballet dancer. Everybody is, in some sense, controlled by their size and their gender. I'm not going to be allowed to play the part that Denzel Washington plays. "
Gender
Play
Washington
" It took a long time for me to have any impact in the business because I didn't look like an actor, I didn't sound like an actor. "
Long
Business
Impact
" I've got two artificial knees, I have an artificial shoulder, and I'm reasonably healthy given the damage I've done to myself. Everything hurts. "
Done
Two
Myself
" I was in high school in 1953 when the Committee of One Million circulated a petition urging that Red China - one third of the world's population - be excluded from the United Nations. And I remember I refused to sign it, at 14 or 15 years old. "
World
High School
Old
" My father was a classic intellectual. From him I learned devotion, and I also learned about the life of the mind. "
Mind
Father
Him
" My grandfather was a really, really tough no-nonsense factory worker who emigrated from Ireland in about 1900 to Bridgeport, Conn. He had a big effect on me. Those guys who took a great leap out into what they knew not were the ones who were the real stars, the real heroes. "
Grandfather
Tough
Stars
" My problem is, if any place I'm sleeping catches on fire, I've got a problem because it takes me 20 minutes to get everything moving in the morning. "
Fire
Me
Got
" No one would ever cast me as an aristocrat. I think the big thing about being an Irish artist is access to melancholy. Especially the American Irish. The availability of loss, some kind of pain, is an important part of who we are. I think my Irishness gave me that. "
American
Artist
Loss
" Theater is a physical activity as much as anything. It's harder for me to learn the lines than it was 30 years ago. At the same time, I'll never quit working in the theater - until I can't memorize two lines back to back. "
Quit
Learn
Back
" The older I get, the more interesting the part has to be. Bobby Knight is extremely interesting. "
Interesting
More
Older
" What really matters is that you do what you think is right, what you believe in, and you surround yourself with the people you care about in this world. That's what counts in this life. "
Yourself
Life
Think
" When you think about it, what's the difference between Bobby Knight and Vince Lombardi? Why is one guy a god, and the other guy is regarded as a crazy man? "
Crazy
Difference
God
" You know, you get to a certain age, 45, 50, I don't know when it happens, I said, 'Jesus, all I got is a certain amount of time. Maybe I should think about using it a little better.' "
Better
You
Time
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