Explore Quotes by Nicolas Cage

To begin... To begin... How to start? I'm hungry. I should get coffee. Coffee would help me think. Maybe I should write something first, then reward myself with coffee. Coffee and a muffin. Okay, so I need to establish the themes. Maybe a banana-nut. That's a good muffin.

You get dinged for wanting to do a comedy, then wanting to do a big-budget action film, and then wanting to do an indie. But you can't let other people trying to label you get in the way of trying to do something artistically.

You can choose your family sometimes. You can choose people, it could be a teacher, it could be a professor, it could be someone you work with that actually genuinely cares about you and wants you to succeed.

When you start a movie, it's not like other kinds of work that you have when you know your boss for years or colleagues for years. You're meeting everyone, mostly, for the first time. You have to get comfortable with those people so you can perform, because the first thing that is going to shut you down is any kind of anxiety.

When I'm in England, I know I'm a visitor, but being a white man in England with ancestry that's German and Italian, I have a history with the Romans and the Saxons. I feel some connection and ancestry here, as weird as that sounds.

When I won the Oscar, I made a point of actively going against that and doing adventure films like 'Con Air' and 'Gone in 60 Seconds,' not what would be expected.

When I was eight, I would look at the cover of the 'Ghost Rider' comic book in my little home in Long Beach, California, and I couldn't get my head around how something that scary could also be good. To me it was my first philosophical awakening - 'How is this possible, this duality?'

When I play supernatural characters in 'Ghost Rider' or 'City Of Angels,' the possibilities are limitless. The possibilities are endless, you can do so much with that.

We do see Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi and Chow Yun Fat, but it's very rare to see the Chinese male actor in Hollywood movies, which is something I take great umbrage with. You know, my son is Asian. He may want to direct one day; he may want to be an actor like his father - and I want that to be open to him.

There were two movies that asked me to go to Australia or New Zealand for long periods of time. One was 'Lord of the Rings' and one was 'The Matrix.' But I was actively involved at that time raising my family, and I couldn't really take that time out.

There is a misperception, if you will, in critical response or even in Hollywood, that I can only do exaggerated characters. Or what they would call over-the-top performances. Well, this is completely false.

The only reason why I tend to pass on a movie is either I don't think I'm right for the material and can't play it honestly, or because of time constraints with personal things in my life.

The end of the world is on people's minds. We have the power to destroy or save ourselves, but the question is what do you do with that responsibility.

The best characters are the ones that somehow manage to be both attractive and repulsive at the same time. If you do that, you're at the center of the universe - if you can find characters who are more ambiguous and can raise more questions than answers.

Snakes are sometimes perceived as evil, but they are also perceived as medicine. If you look at an ambulance, there's the two snakes on the side of the ambulance. The caduceus, or the staff of Hermes, there's the two snakes going up it, which means that the venom can also be healing.

People are losing jobs, people need to be entertained, and I want to make movies that parents and children can look forward to seeing, that can become a kind of family ritual.

One of the things that's interesting to me is I find things like caffeine and stunts actually relax me. When they're putting a bit of gel on my arm and lighting me on fire, or when I'm about to go into a high-speed car chase or rev a motorcycle up pretty fast, I find everything else around me slows down.

Often you hear stories about never working with children. I disagree because children still have that residual magical thinking. They haven't had their imagination knocked out of them by turning into adults and life experiences.

My house is basically a trailer. I live a circus lifestyle. I'm always moving. It's not always easy for people that live with me, but that's the path I chose.

My father once said, 'If you're in the desert and you're dying of thirst, are you going to drink a glass of blood or are you going to drink a glass of water?' I think what he was trying to say, interesting coming from my blood father, is sometimes there are people in your family that can be toxic.

Most of my favourite moments in film have been when I've had an opportunity to say something from scratch, something original, whether I jotted down a few lines or it came out in improvisation.