"I was trained to be an actor, not a star. I was trained to play roles, not to deal with fame and agents and lawyers and the press." "It really costs me a lot emotionally to watch myself on-screen. I think of myself, and feel like I'm quite young, and then I look at this old man with the baggy chins and the tired eyes and the receding hairline and all that.": Gene's personal reflections on aging. "Psychologically, Gene/myself, we did not think about making it in the terms that people think about. We fully expected to be failures for our entire life. Meaning that we would always be scrambling to get a part. We were actors. We had no pretensions. There was more dignity in being unsuccessful." Dustin Hoffman on him and Hackman as young stage actors and roommates in New York. Upon accepting his Best Actor Oscar - "I wish all five of us could be up here, I really do." "If I start to become a star, I'll lose contact with the normal guys I play best." "I came to New York when I was 25, and I worked at Howard Johnson's in Times Square, where I did the door in this completely silly uniform. Before that, I had been a student at the Pasadena Playhouse, where I had been awarded the least-likely-to-succeed prize, along with my pal Dustin Hoffman, which was a big reason we set off for New York together. Out of nowhere, this teacher I totally despised at the Pasadena Playhouse suddenly walked by HoJo's and came right up into my face and shouted, 'See, Hackman, I told you that you would never amount to anything!' I felt 1 inch tall." [On seeing Marlon Brando in "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) and becoming determined to be an actor] "He made it seem something natural." "I wanted to act, but I'd always been convinced that actors had to be handsome. That came from the days when Errol Fyln was my idol. I'd come out of a theater and be startled when I looked in a mirror because I didn't look like Flynn. I felt like him." I suppose I wanted to be an actor from the time I was about ten, maybe even younger than that. Recollections of early movies that I had seen and actors that I admired like Jimmy Cagney, Errol Flynn, those kind of romantic action guys. When I saw those actors, I felt I could do that. But I was in New York for about eight years before I had a job. I sold ladies shoes, polished leather furniture, drove a truck. I think that if you have it in you and you want it bad enough you can do it. "The difference between a hero and a coward is one step sideways." "Dysfunctional families have sired a number of pretty good actors."