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" I did get to hang out with my dad for a little while. I went with him to summer stock. I watched him be a real king of the world. He'd ship out as a star in summer stock. He sometimes directed the shows. I learned a lot from him - not just about acting, but about everything, how to handle a woman. "

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" There are wonderful films that become studio films, but they're conceived independently. That's where the action is. 'Being John Malkovich' is a great example of a picture you wouldn't think the studios would want, and it turns out to be a movie that touches everybody's heart. "

David Carradine

Action

Great

Picture

" If you cannot be a poet, be the poem. "

" The first important role was a Broadway lead I did called 'The Royal Hunt Of The Sun' by Peter Shaffer, the guy who did 'Equus' and 'Amadeus.' Many of the important roles that I got later on were because the guy who was going to hire me was in that audience and had his mind blown. I tend to do that. I blow people's minds with my performances. "

" Quentin Tarantino doesn't beat Hal Ashby, and he's one of my favorite directors. Quentin is incredible. "

David Carradine

Hal

Favorite

" I'm like a renegade and that rubs people wrong. "

David Carradine

Renegade

Wrong

" That's Quentin. He's an absolute master of his own fate. If he agrees with you, he'll change his mind instantly. If he thinks that he's right, there's no way you can get him to change his mind. "

" In the second installment, I pretty much dominate the show. Somehow or another, though, I manage to apparently dominate the first show pretty well with just my voice and my hands and a shot of my boots kicking cartridges out of the way. "

" Kung fu: You've got to spend your whole life at it before you're kung fu. "

" I was a truant. And if you're a truant in New York City, the truant officer gets after you, and then you get into the courts, and then things happen which they really shouldn't. But I ended up in a very sweet reform school. It's the place you go to if you've got a really kind judge. "

" I remember when I did the pilot, and I though no network is going to want to do this. How could that happen? A half Chinese guy walking the old west that doesn't fire one gun and never gets on a horse? "

" Because you know how you say I've got to really get down and really do some training and then of course, you never do or you do it for a couple of weeks and slough it back off again but I'm being forced to do something that I really want to do and I loved it. "

" There's tons of members of the Carradine family. It's more like a clan than it is like a family, and it's rare that we can get a bunch of them together. We do once in a while. "

David Carradine

Clan

Rare

" I've always known whether I'm great. Or not. "

" I like Bill a lot. As Bill is presented, I mean you don't ever see Bill blow her head off? You know? And I think what Quentin has done is he created a monster. "

" My big fight is not in the movie and I don't understand that decision but I know he's right about it, whatever it is. Quentin did not hire me because I'm a kung fu expert; he hired me because he liked to listen to me talk. "

David Carradine

Decision

Talk

" I've never been in prison. I've been in jail a lot. But I've never actually been sentenced to anything. "

" I'm analytical as an actor, and one of the things Quentin did was free me from that. "

David Carradine

Analytical

Actor

" There's an alternative. There's always a third way, and it's not a combination of the other two ways. It's a different way. "

" I went to 17 different schools when I was a kid. Every time I went to school, no matter what I talked like, it was always from the wrong place. "

" Most actors spend a lot of time training themselves to be an actor. And I kind of didn't do that. "

" I went to college at San Francisco State and supported myself working the graveyard shift at a brewery and did a little theater. It was great. I'd do Shakespeare and stuff like that. "

David Carradine

Great

College

" I've known Daryl Hannah for 20 years. She's kind of a friend of the family. Anyway, I've been hot for her ever since 'Blade Runner.' "

" I studied music formally. I was probably less formal about my study of acting than anything. "

" I don't need to convince anybody that I know kung fu, but maybe somebody needs to know that I really can act, without doing a Chinese accent or a funny walk. "

" My role in kung fu - in the art of kung fu, not the series - is not as a practitioner. My role is that of an evangelist, which is an entirely different thing. "

" It was pretty extensive - we worked out 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 3 months, which I think is more than anybody in the Olympics. I thought well I don't need this, the girls need it, but it was a gift. "

" But, Tarantino has seen all of my movies. He's seen my good stuff, he's seen my bad stuff, he's seen the ones I directed, he's read my autobiography. There's an awful lot of things he knows about me, all of which I think had something to do with his casting. "

" I think people are a little surprised sometimes at the level on which I actually talk. I don't talk like Caine. And every once in a while, somebody is surprised because I smoke and I drink. But I don't feel that is a contradiction. "

" 'Kung Fu' was never cancelled; I just left. I decided I had enough of it, and I thought I should do a movie right away, because I think when you leave a television series, it's important that you establish the fact that you're a movie actor really quickly, or you might never get that chance. "

" Quentin wanted to create this special world in which everybody walks around with a samurai sword, extras in the airport, a special little place in the airplane to stick your samurai sword. "