Top 100 Alan Rickman Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “We’re dead as a species if we don’t tell stories, because then we don’t know who we are.”

— Alan Rickman

2. “There’s a voice inside you that tells you what you should do.”

— Alan Rickman

3. “Actors are agents of change. A film, a piece of theater, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world.”

— Alan Rickman

4. “And it’s a human need to be told stories. The more we’re governed by idiots and have no control over our destinies, the more we need to tell stories to each other about who we are, why we are, where we come from, and what might be possible.”

— Alan Rickman

5. “I think there’s some connection between absolute discipline and absolute freedom.”

— Alan Rickman

6. “It would be wonderful to think that the future is unknown and sort of surprising.”

— Alan Rickman

7. “I am the character you are not supposed to like.”

— Alan Rickman

8. “Maverick is a word which appeals to me more than misfit. Maverick is active, misfit is passive.”

— Alan Rickman

9. “That’s it then. Cancel the kitchen scraps for lepers and orphans, no more merciful beheadings, and call off Christmas.”

— Alan Rickman

10. “I don’t play villains, I play? very interesting people.”

— Alan Rickman

11. “I am hellbent on defying your expectations, at every turn, and even if you don’t like what’s being done, I dare you to find it uninteresting.”

— Alan Rickman

12. “Acting touches nerves you have absolutely no control over.”

— Alan Rickman

13. “I think there should be laughs in everything. Sometimes, it’s a slammed door, a pie in the face or just a recognition of our frailties.”

— Alan Rickman

14. “I mean, language fascinates me anyway, and different words have different energies and you can change the whole drive of a sentence.”

— Alan Rickman

15. “You try to find things that are challenging and interesting and hopefully it will be the same to the audience.”

— Alan Rickman

16. “I do take my work seriously and the way to do that is not to take yourself too seriously.”

— Alan Rickman

17. “The point about a great story is that it’s got a beginning, a middle and end.”

— Alan Rickman

18. “I have every sympathy for writers. It’s a mystery to me what they do. I can edit. I can cross out and say, ‘I’m not saying that’ or, ‘How about we move this to here? Wouldn’t that make that bit of the story better?’ But where any of it comes from is beyond me. I will never write a play or a novel.”

— Alan Rickman

19. “I suppose with any good writing and interesting characters, you can have that awfully overused word: a journey.”

— Alan Rickman

20. “If only life could be a little more tender and art a little more robust.”

— Alan Rickman

21. “My idea of a real treat is Magic Mountain without standing in line.”

— Alan Rickman

22. “Talent is an accident of genes – and a responsibility.”

— Alan Rickman

23. “I have this feeling that if I could sort out what’s on my dining room table, everything would fall into place.”

— Alan Rickman

24. “If you could build a house on a trampoline, that would suit me fine.”

— Alan Rickman

25. “I can only see my limitations. That’s just who I am.”

— Alan Rickman

26. “If people want to know who I am, it is all in the work.”

— Alan Rickman

27. “Give me a window and I’ll stare out it.”

— Alan Rickman

28. “I always feel that when I come to Edinburgh, in many ways I am coming home.”

— Alan Rickman

29. “I love perfumes. Every morning when my girlfriend and I come down to the courtyard in our block of flats we’re assailed by the most delicious scent – jasmine round a doorway. It almost makes me swoon.”

— Alan Rickman

30. “Mellow doesn’t describe me. I’m hungry every day.”

— Alan Rickman

31. “When I am asked about influences, I always say I bow down to Fred Astaire, because when you look at him dancing you never look at his extremities, do you? You look at his centre. What you never see is the hours of work that went into the routines, you just see the breathtaking spirit and freedom.”

— Alan Rickman

32. “I’ve never been able to plan my life. I just lurch from indecision to indecision.”

— Alan Rickman

33. “I do feel more myself in America. I can regress there, and they have roller-coaster parks.”

— Alan Rickman

34. “I knew with Snape I was working as a double agent, as it turns out, and a very good one at that.”

— Alan Rickman

35. “One thing I will say – my job gets harder and harder. The more you understand about what you are capable of, the less the instrument can do it physically. It’s an inverse equation, if that’s the right phrase. I just slammed those two words together. It sounded right.”

— Alan Rickman

36. “It’s a nightmare to sit and watch a film that I’m in. There’s a horrible inescapability to it.”

— Alan Rickman

37. “I approach every part I’m asked to do and decide to do from exactly the same angle: who is this person, what does he want, how does he attempt to get it, and what happens to him when he doesn’t get it, or if he does?”

— Alan Rickman

38. “Every so often you read a play and a character just speaks to you – almost seems to speak through you, in fact.”

— Alan Rickman

39. “Any actor who judges his character is a fool – for every role you play you’ve got to absorb that character’s motives and justifications.”

— Alan Rickman

40. “I like it when stories are left open.”

— Alan Rickman

41. “All I want to see from an actor is the intensity and accuracy of their listening.”

— Alan Rickman

42. “Acting is mostly about listening. If you just focus in on what the other person is saying, acting takes care of itself to quite a large extent.”

— Alan Rickman

43. “I have a love-hate relationship with white silk.”

— Alan Rickman

44. “I want to swim in both directions at once. Desire success, court failure.”

— Alan Rickman

45. “If you spend any time in Los Angeles, there’s only one topic of conversation.”

— Alan Rickman

46. “I have just returned from the dubbing studio where I spoke into a microphone as Severus Snape for absolutely the last time.”

— Alan Rickman

47. “I never talk about ‘Harry Potter’ because I think that would rob children of something that’s private to them. I think too many things get explained, so I hate talking about it.”

— Alan Rickman

48. “Nothing gives me as much pleasure as travelling. I love getting on trains and boats and planes.”

— Alan Rickman

49. “Each character I play has different dimensions. I’m not interested in words that pull them together.”

— Alan Rickman

50. “Los Angeles is not a town full of airheads. There’s a great deal of wonderful energy there.”

— Alan Rickman