"The average celebrity meets, in one year, ten times the amount of people that the average person meets in his entire life." "It was one of the few times when it was money well spent." [about the $5 million he earned for A Few Good Men ] "When I read the part, I knew I'd win the Oscar for it." [regarding Terms of Endearment] "You only lie to two people in your life: your girlfriend and the police." "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!" "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." [On the birth of his son after having had two daughters:] "I finally got it right." "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." "I only take viagra when I am with more than one woman." "I'm not a raver anymore, all good things must come to an end." "I was particularly proud of my performance as the Joker. I considered it a piece of pop art." "My motto is: more good times." "A question you always ask in acting is, Where were you going if this scene didn't interrupt the movements of the character?" "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. "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." 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]. [On turning down the role played by Robert Redford in The Sting] "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". [On being nominated for an Oscar for the third time for The Last Detail] "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". "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. "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." "Just because you're a perfectionist doesn't mean you're perfect." - On Stanley Kubrick Beer, it's the best damn drink in the world. "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) "As an actor, I have no desire for anybody to understand my past work. Period." "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." "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." "The thing I like about The Joker is that his sense of humor is completely tasteless."