Dustin Hoffman Quotes

Stories? We all spend our lives telling them, about this, about that, about people … But some? Some stories are so good we wish they’d never end. They’re so gripping that we’ll go without sleep just to see a little bit more. Some stories bring us laughter and sometimes they bring us tears … but isn’t that what a great story does? Makes you feel? Stories that are so powerful … they really are with us forever.

The varying physical characteristics of the actors may also necessitate changes. Sean Connery is six feet four. Dustin Hoffman isn't.

When King Lear dies in Act V, do you know what Shakespeare has written? He’s written “He dies.” That’s all, nothing more. No fanfare, no metaphor, no brilliant final words. The culmination of the most influential work of dramatic literature is “He dies.” It takes Shakespeare, a genius, to come up with “He dies.” And yet every time I read those two words, I find myself overwhelmed with dysphoria. And I know it’s only natural to be sad, but not because of the words “He dies,” but because of the life we saw prior to the words. I’ve lived all five of my acts, Mahoney, and I am not asking you to be happy that I must go. I’m only asking that you turn the page, continue reading… and let the next story begin. And if anyone asks what became of me, you relate my life in all its wonder, and end it with a simple and modest “He died.

Life is an occasion...rise to it.

I was asked to write something for the movie Hero, starring Dustin Hoffman and Geena Davis. Tommy had agreed I would submit a song for the film, to be sung by Gloria Estefan, who was on Epic Records (Sony, Tommy’s label, was the parent company). I knew that Luther Vandross was also writing a song for the soundtrack, so I would be in great company.

Sure, I’d thought about it—Go northeast, young man! To Cody. You know, to win her back. Like Dustin Hoffman chasing Katharine Ross in “The Graduate.” But what was the use in that?

Sean's (Penn) is going to be the new Dustin Hoffman. He'll be around a long time.

(In response to the question: What is your least favorite word?) It's three words that we usually use as one: woulda, shoulda, coulda. That hurts more than anything, I think. All of us.

If I was going to be a woman, I would want to be as beautiful as possible. And they said to me, ‘Uh, that’s as beautiful as we can get you.’ And I went home and started crying to my wife, and I said, ‘I have to make this picture.’ And she said, ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘Because I think I’m an interesting woman when I look at myself on screen, and I know that if I met myself at a party, I would never talk to that character because she doesn’t fulfill, physically, the demands that we’re brought up to think that women have to have in order for us to ask them out.’ She says, ‘What are you saying?’ and I said, ‘There’s too many interesting women I have not had the experience to know in this life because I have been brainwashed.’ It was not what it felt like to be a woman. It was what it felt like to be someone that people didn’t respect, for the wrong reasons. I know it’s a comedy. But comedy’s a serious business.

I say go, go, be led. particularly If you're in your twenties, which I suspect a lot of you are in. I tell my kids it's a question Mark decade in a sense. and we're told we should know what we want to do. It's a terrible thing. 'what are you going to do?' 'what are you going to be?' 'how can you make a living at that' no, no, no, no, no it's your question mark. You're never gonna have this luxury again of not knowing and it is a luxury not to know. You can play, you can do that, you must because it's your only way not to go crazy. Because if you're- meaning if you're gonna wait for the job, you're gonna die

After dinner yesterday, I went to the movies and saw Meryl Streep in Sophie’s Choice. Hitler’s invasion of Poland only figured in the film. In the film, Meryl Streep divorces Dustin Hoffman, but then in a commuter train she meets this civil engineer played by Robert De Niro, and remarries. A pretty all-right movie.

Harold, if you pause to think, you'd realize that, that answer is inextricably contingent upon the type of life being led... and, of course, the quality of the pancakes.

The Graduate, an Oscar-winning movie that appeared in late 1967, dramatized these changes. It featured a young man (Dustin Hoffman) who was in no way a hippie, a user of drugs, or a political radical. But he seemed unconnected to traditional values. Alienated from many things, he felt no kinship with fraternity men at his university or with materialistic adults of the older generation.

You remember when I said how I was gonna explain about life, buddy? Well the thing about life is, it gets weird. People are always talking ya about truth. Everybody always knows what the truth is, like it was toilet paper or somethin', and they got a supply in the closet. But what you learn, as you get older, is there ain't no truth. All there is is bullshit, pardon my vulgarity here. Layers of it. One layer of bullshit on top of another. And what you do in life like when you get older is, you pick the layer of bullshit that you prefer and that's your bullshit, so to speak.

Murphy’s Law first reared its head when Bill White, Nintendo’s point guy for the film, received a call from Joffe letting him know that Dustin Hoffman was extremely interested in playing the role of Mario.

At Woodland, in walked David Geffen, Anjelica Huston, maybe Dustin Hoffman, tennis shoes under his arm. “Did I miss the game?” Alain Delon … Mengers and Evans at the pool, drinking a bottle of white wine cellar–plucked for the occasion: “Now really, Sue … Do you get white wine at Columbia?” Giggling: “You and I have never agreed on any kind of material. And so far you’ve been right.” Now down to casting. “I think of De Niro.…

As proof, I offer Dustin Hoffman and Claire Danes, who played Rainman in Rainman, and Temple Grandin in Temple Grandin respectively on the big screen. While any moviegoer knows that people who portray other people on the screen are actors, both Hoffman and Danes convinced millions of people around the world that they were watching an accurate portrayal of autism.

The Graduate.Will anybody of a certain age forget that scene when Braddock (Dustin Hoffman)

Dustin Hoffman once said to me, “Alec, we’re all in line; some of us are just in a shorter line.” It was a very wise statement, because that competition between performers to get scripts and parts is very real and very aggressive, even to people at his level. The biggest stars in the world, when I came into this business there was Nicholson, De Niro, Pacino, Hoffman, and Michael Douglas—a lot of great movie stars, and they were all jockeying to get material. That’s something that never changes. The preciousness of good writing, it’s very tough to come by.

Mental Accounting Alarm clocks and Christmas clubs are external devices people use to solve their self-control problems. Another way to approach these problems is to adopt internal control systems, otherwise known as mental accounting. Mental accounting is the system (sometimes implicit) that households use to evaluate, regulate, and process their home budget. Almost all of us use mental accounts, even if we’re not aware that we’re doing so. The concept is beautifully illustrated by an exchange between the actors Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman in one of those extra features offered on DVDs. Hackman and Hoffman were friends back in their starving artist days, and Hackman tells the story of visiting Hoffman’s apartment and having his host ask him for a loan. Hackman agreed to the loan, but then they went into Hoffman’s kitchen, where several mason jars were lined up on the counter, each containing money. One jar was labeled “rent,” another “utilities,” and so forth. Hackman asked why, if Hoffman had so much money in jars, he could possibly need a loan, whereupon Hoffman pointed to the food jar, which was empty. According to economic theory (and simple logic), money is “fungible,” meaning that it doesn’t come with labels. Twenty dollars in the rent jar can buy just as much food as the same amount in the food jar. But households adopt mental accounting schemes that violate fungibility for the same reasons that organizations do: to control spending. Most organizations have budgets for various activities, and anyone who has ever worked in such an organization has experienced the frustration of not being able to make an important purchase because the relevant account is already depleted. The fact that there is unspent money in another account is considered no more relevant than the money sitting in the rent jar on Dustin Hoffman’s kitchen counter.