My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch

I`ll tell you one thing: Don`t ever give anybody your best advice, because they`re not going to follow it.

Most of the early part of an actor`s career, you do the jobs you get.

With my sunglasses on, I`m Jack Nicholson. Without them, I`m fat and 60.

I learned a long time ago in Hollywood that the only person I should vote for is myself.

Once you`ve been really bad in a movie, there`s a certain kind of fearlessness you develop.

In my last year of school, I was voted Class Optimist and Class Pessimist. Looking back, I realize I was only half right.

When I was in high school, I earned the pimple award and every other gross-out award.

I know I can act. There aren`t too many other jobs I know how to do.

We were moving to a freer society before AIDS. Most people who investigated this knew that if you were not shooting up or getting f***ed in the heinie, you were as likely to get AIDS as you were to have a safe fall on your head while walking down Wilshire Boulevard. But you could not proselytize this view. The facts were almost useless. You couldn`t give a woman the facts and have her respond, `Oh, all right.`

What`s beautiful is all that counts, pal. That`s ALL that counts.

The blues and jazz will live forever... So will the Delta and the Big Easy.

Age is the first limitation on roles that I`ve ever had to encounter, and I hit that awhile ago.

I would be so happy if I didn`t smoke, for a lot of reasons. I can`t believe that I can`t break the habit. I don`t want to be lying around, dying in Cedar`s Sinai Hospital and thinking that I was as stupid enough, a man who is as petrified of dying as I am, to have done it to myself. I`m a real fraidy-cat about mortality.

There is no way you can get people to believe you on screen if they know who you really are through television.

I think it is very unattractive for me to be seen fawning over little, tiny girls. I didn`t feel that for a long time but now I do. If I could slip them out the back entrance wrapped in a blanket, that`s a different story. (February 2004)

I only take Viagra when I`m with more than one woman.

Explaining his controversial remarks on the death of Heath Ledger: What I actually said was, `I warned them.` I had a bad experience with those sleeping pills that Ledger apparently took. I took one of these pills and had just gone to sleep when I had a phone call to go to an emergency at a friend`s house. I jumped up, went outside and some time later woke up on the driveway. It sounds amusing but I live in the mountains and it could of been worse. I didn`t know Heath Ledger, but I know those pills.

Every director implored me, "Jack, can`t you talk a little bit faster?" It was like a hot button for me and I would become hateful. So when Roman started to say it, I began and he said, "Jack, this movie is 100-and-something pages long. To have a movie that is screen able, you`ll have to talk a little faster". [Roman Polanski directed him in Chinatown (1974)].

I think that`s what distinguishes Schmidt, really. In the movies now, so much of what is appealing to an audience is the dramatic or has to do with science fiction, and Schmidt is simply human. There`s no melodrama; there`s no device, It`s just about a human being.

I`ve been too many places. I`m like the bad penny.

[On turning down the role played by Robert Redford in The Sting (1973)] "I liked the period, the whole project and I knew it would be commercial. But at the time, I needed to put my energies into a movie that really needed them. I needed to take a risk".

In this industry, there are only two ways up the ladder. Rung by rung or claw your way to the top. It`s sure been tough on my nails.

Financially, I`ve lost money and made money, but I know my way around financially.

I sort of understood that when I first started: that you shouldn`t repeat a success. Very often you`re going to, and maybe the first time you do, it works. And you love it. But then you`re trapped.

I used to think that one of the great signs of security was the ability to just walk away.

I just wish every film I liked wasn`t either foreign or made in America but with such terrible difficulty. This is the worst period ever for trying to do interesting work. (1996)

With my sunglasses on, I`m Jack Nicholson. Without them, I`m fat and seventy.

Star quality is if you`re on stage and a cat walks on and they still watch you.

When I am cast in a movie where I feel that the woman`s part is more interesting, I usually start thinking about Spencer Tracy and Fred Astaire. They seem to be the most clear actors when working with women.

Well, a girlfriend once told me never to fight with anybody you don`t love.

I`ve grown out of talking like I know something when I don`t.

I`m Irish. I think about death all the time.

Because you know, down deep in my heart, when all is said and done, I still live under the illusion that basically people think of me as an up-and-coming young actor.

I have a lot of vanity.

It`s a slight stretch of the imagination but most people are alike in most ways so I`ve never had any trouble identifying with the character that I`m playing.

My whole career strategy has been to build a base so that I could take the roles I want to play. I`d hate to think that a shorter part might not be available because I was worried about my billing.

I don`t have any plugs or tucks but people do what they want. I look at it as mutilation.

I`ve never been able to say I`ve been influenced by a list of artists I like because I like thousands and thousands and I`ve been influenced in some way by all of them.

Early on, if I was alone two three nights in a row, I`d start writing poems about suicide.

I`m not hard to get along with.

I`m the last guy in the world to feel overlooked by the Academy.

[On being nominated for an Oscar for the third time for The Last Detail (1973)] "The first time I was up for an Oscar, I thought I would win it. But I didn`t have as sharp a view as I do now. The second time...I expected to lose, and deservedly lose, to George C. Scott. But even getting a nomination blows my mind. I`d love to win but now that I`ve had several good performances that people at large have liked, it becomes harder to excite them. And familiarity breeds contempt".

I`m an actor who they said was wrinkled and balding and everything else when I was in my early 30`s. Most of the people who wrote that who thought they were younger than me are now bald and wrinkled.

People who speak in metaphors should shampoo my crotch.

There`s only two people in your life you should lie to... the police and your girlfriend.

I don`t have any fear of intimacy, but rather thrive on it, which is rare in a public person.

The thing I like about The Joker is that his sense of humor is completely tasteless.

The minute that you`re not learning I believe you`re dead.

In other words, I wouldn`t like to be an actor if I could only be real. I like to get wild, behaviorally wild, and it`s crazy to think of any form where it`s just one way.

Just let the wardrobe do the acting.

Acting is everybody`s favorite second job.

Well, I`m not going to sit here and pretend that I haven`t been a rogue most of my life.

When I come up against a director who has a concept that I don`t agree with, or maybe I just haven`t thought of it or whatever, I`d be more prone to go with them than my own because I want to be out of control as an actor, I want them to have the control, otherwise it`s going to become predictably my work, and that`s not fun.

Well, a younger woman is a type, but not necessarily a type for me. And what is a younger woman? I mean, I`m pretty old. Almost everyone is younger.

There`s a period just before you start a movie when you start thinking, I don`t know what in the world I`m going to do. It`s free-floating anxiety. In my case, though, this is over by lunch the first day of shooting.

I never had a policy about marriage. I got married very young in life and I always think in all relationships, I`ve always thought that it`s counterproductive to have a theory on that.

I don`t believe in God now. I can still work up an envy for someone who has a faith. I can see how that could be a deeply soothing experience. (1992)

We are going as fast as we can as soon as we can. We`re in a race against time, until we run out of money.

My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.

I`m a New Wave baby, so I got very stimulated by foreign film.

Frankly, I got into the movies because I like the movies a lot.

[on Jessica Lange] She is like a delicate fawn, but crossed with a Buick.

As an actor, I have no desire for anybody to understand my past work. Period.

Beer, it`s the best damn drink in the world.

"Just because you`re a perfectionist doesn`t mean you`re perfect." - On Stanley Kubrick

I`m very contra my constituency in terms of abortion because I`m positively against it. I don`t have the right to any other view. My only emotion is gratitude, literally, for my life.

So I mean it when I say that if you can`t appreciate Brando, I wouldn`t know how to talk to you. If there`s anything obvious in life, this is it. Other actors don`t go around discussing who is the best actor in the world, because it`s obvious - Marlon Brando is.

I don`t want people to know what I`m actually like. It`s not good for an actor.

"You`re new here, aren`t you?" Nicholson, who rarely is seen in public without his sunglasses, replied when asked by a photographer to take off his glasses for a photo.

A question you always ask in acting is, Where were you going if this scene didn`t interrupt the movements of the character?

My motto is: more good times.

I was particularly proud of my performance as the Joker. I considered it a piece of pop art.

I`m not a raver anymore, all good things must come to an end.

I only take viagra when I am with more than one woman.

[On the birth of his son after having had two daughters:] "I finally got it right."

A star on a movie set is like a time bomb. That bomb has got to be defused so people can approach it without fear.

If you get an impulse in a scene, no matter how wrong it seems, follow the impulse. It might be something and if it ain`t - take two!

You only lie to two people in your life: your girlfriend and the police.

"When I read the part, I knew I`d win the Oscar for it." [regarding Terms of Endearment (1983)]

"It was one of the few times when it was money well spent." [about the $5 million he earned for A Few Good Men (1992) ]

The average celebrity meets, in one year, ten times the amount of people that the average person meets in his entire life.