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" Technically, maybe I learned most of all from George Stevens, and among his movies I learned the most from 'A Place in the Sun.' It's a lesson in moviemaking. "

Mike Nichols

Movies

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" I'm an enormous fan of 'The West Wing.' It was one of the very few shows I would watch every week. "

" As a little kid in a sometimes hard place, I went to the movies as often as I could. Movies - making them, seeing them - is not something that could ever lose its pleasure for me. That puts them on a short list of things that eternally give me joy - love, family, food, movies. "

" Here's the most mysterious thing to me. I look back at those first plays I did and the first movies I did, and I only have one question, which is, 'What was I so confident about? Where did I get that? "

Mike Nichols

Here

Confident

" You could say that it's in talking movies that inner life begins to appear. You can see things happen to the faces of people that were neither planned nor rehearsed. "

" You want to make money, remake 'Cinderella.' You want to move people, remake the Hippolytus and Phaedra myth. "

" Limitations are inspiring: they lead to thinking, so I don't mind them. "

" There's nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you're meant to do. It's like falling in love. "

" I had a high school girlfriend whose mother gave us theater tickets, so I saw the second night performance of 'A Streetcar Named Desire.' My girl and I could not get up during intermission, we were so stunned. To this day it's the only thing I've seen on stage that's 100 percent real and 100 percent poetic simultaneously. "

" All the theories that acting is reacting to imaginary circumstances as though they are real, and directing is turning psychology into behavior, those are all stabs at something that can't be taught. All the great actors can't talk about what they do, and they don't want to begin to talk about it. They just do it. "

" My first memory in the world is my gym teacher ripping my mother's necklace off her neck and throwing it out the window and her running downstairs to go after it. I have no memory before that. I was 4. My father had a lot of girlfriends and my mother had a lot of boyfriends. "

" In a weird way, when I was looking back, I didn't know I was going to be a director until I was. "

" I loved all movies, literally. I certainly loved 'Shane' and 'Roxie Hart.' Later on, when I was less of a kid, I loved 'L'Avventura' and 'Persona' and all Fellini movies and like everybody else I loved John Ford. Then and now, I loved Preston Sturges, maybe above anyone. "

" I never understand when people say, 'Do you do comedy or tragedy?' I don't think they're very much different. They both have to be true, and there isn't a great play in the world that doesn't have funny parts to it - as 'Salesman' does, as 'King Lear' does. The whole idea is to reflect life in some way, which means surely you have to have both. "

" I think the main thing about comedy and humor is that it's impossible and always was impossible to define. "

" Chicago is not a very fashion-driven place. Nobody says, 'Oh, you've got to come see these fabulous people!' Nobody cares. "

" I think a director can make a play happen before your eyes so that you are part of it and it is part of you. If you can get it right, there's no mystery. It's not about mystery. It's not even mysterious. It's about our lives. "

" A play, after all, is a mystery. There's no narration. And as soon as there's no narration, it's open to interpretation. It must be interpreted. You don't have a choice... Each play can become many things. "

" I believed early and still believe that everybody who can act can do it already, just they don't know how and don't want to talk about it. "

" I used to say that winning the Oscar means being back at the Beverly Hills Hotel at 1 A.M. feeling empty. It's the industry voting. It doesn't come from God. It doesn't change your life, really. "

" The only safe thing is to take a chance. "

" I came to love silence, because it's so rare, and it's now my favorite aural condition. "

" Clay Aiken is amazing beyond that glorious voice. Turns out he is an excellent comic actor and a master of character. "

" The whole point about laughter is it's like mercury: you can't catch it, you can't catch what motivates it - that's why it's funny. "

Mike Nichols

Point

You

" I'm in the theater because of two plays: 'A Streetcar Named Desire' and 'Death of a Salesman.' "

" Improvisation has to do with exploring something like two brothers in a room together. You find out things about situations by discovering the things that they aren't saying. It's a way to explore scenes. Sometimes it's more useful than others, but it's always there to see if there's anything that you might improve. "

" Stand-up comedy is a very hard thing on the spirit. There are people who transcend it, like Jack Benny and Steve Martin, but in its essence, it's soul-destroying. It tends to turn people into control freaks. "

" Oh my God, if I know anything, I know I'm gonna die! I never forget that. I know I'll be forgotten in a minute, and that's just fine with me. "

Mike Nichols

Never Forget

Die

" Any good movie is filled with secrets. "

" I still think that luck is what a lot of the good things come from. It's simply the luck of where you are, when. "

" The producers want us to sell, sell, sell. That's my little joke. That's what we do by day; by night, we're artists. "

Mike Nichols

Day

Want