Top 100 Edward Norton Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Every little thing that people know about you as a person impedes your ability to achieve that kind of terrific suspension of disbelief that happens when an audience goes with an actor and character he’s playing.”

— Edward Norton

52. “Identical twins are endemically alike in many ways.”

— Edward Norton

53. “I’ve observed over and over that people seem to get a much deeper sense of fulfillment out of something they’ve done as an act of service than out of the things they do for themselves.”

— Edward Norton

54. “Basically, I think 21st century conservation is moving toward preserving ecosystems by dealing with the needs of people.”

— Edward Norton

55. “I always felt that acting was an escape, like having the secret key to every door and permission to go into any realm and soak it up. I enjoy that free pass.”

— Edward Norton

56. “I’ve always liked the idea of taking old dramatic ideas and devices and making them feel relevant or contemporary or whatever.”

— Edward Norton

57. “I’m not a very methodologically pure actor. Almost every time that I start, I feel completely at sea. Always at the beginning I feel like a fraud, really, because I’m never sure how to get started.”

— Edward Norton

58. “I start to get fixated on a story and a character and an idea, and at a certain point, I really want to do it. It’s a compulsion to explore a specific thing, as opposed to a compulsion to direct, generally speaking.”

— Edward Norton

59. “I grew up on the golden age of children’s TV.”

— Edward Norton

60. “I grow tired of intelligence having such a limited manifestation in movies – “intelligence” usually meaning coastal, with a certain level of formal education.”

— Edward Norton

61. “I never even considered comedy genre as something to embrace or move away from.”

— Edward Norton

62. “I had a huge advantage with Edward Norton because he’s directed a movie before, so one thing he appreciates is how hard my job is, he’s very sensitive to that. We actually ended up finishing “Leaves of Grass” a day early.”

— Edward Norton

63. “Practiced poorly, tourism can be extremely negative.”

— Edward Norton

64. “I’m a Tulsa Jew and I have a religious upbringing.”

— Edward Norton

65. “I just don’t think most of us are aware how much of what we throw away ends up in the ocean, for starters. Plastic bags are among the worst. The US is actually falling behind the curve on that score. China and many other countries have already banned the production and use of thin plastic bags.”

— Edward Norton

66. “In drama, I think, the audience is a willing participant. It’s suspending a certain kind of disbelief to try to get something out of a story.”

— Edward Norton

67. “The film industry needs to confront the physical footprint of the way films get made.”

— Edward Norton

68. “Young people know how to use these social networking tools, and they know how to use them effectively.”

— Edward Norton

69. “There is a lot of interesting product coming to market already. Bags and bottles and cups and such made of potato starch and other fully biodegradable materials. In some sense, plastic is more chemically complex. We ought to be able to simplify.”

— Edward Norton

70. “When I think about directing a film, the thing that stops me short is wondering if I’m a natural at it the way I think you, and PTA, and Fincher are born directors. Maybe some people’s talent is in understanding the ways that film communicates, without dialogue, without plot.”

— Edward Norton

71. “I like it when the deeper you go with the character, the more you see the layers start to peel away.”

— Edward Norton

72. “It must be good to be in Germany and France, because I have completely forgotten what it is like to be proud of your government.”

— Edward Norton

73. “People are worried about the degree to which corporate interest is starting to threaten human interest.”

— Edward Norton

74. “You know when somebody really knows what they’re drawing from and you can feel it when you see the movie.”

— Edward Norton

75. “When you’re working on a creative thing, everyone has an idea, and they’re pushing it. The first time you work with anybody, you have to get comfortable with the way another person pushes hard for what they want.”

— Edward Norton

76. “You always end up getting involved in things because of, you know, the strange things your life brings you into contact with.”

— Edward Norton

77. “Fame is very corrosive and you have to guard very strictly against it.”

— Edward Norton

78. “You know, independent films have been institutionalized, practically. Every studio has got a boutique arthouse label.”

— Edward Norton

79. “You can’t control everything that comes to you.”

— Edward Norton

80. “I’m pretty busy in my life and I’m very aware of what it takes to direct a movie. It takes a lot out of you; it takes a lot out of the rest of your life, from other people in your life. I don’t lie around hungering for that consumption very often.”

— Edward Norton

81. “It’s dismaying to see the unilateralism that the government is doing.”

— Edward Norton

82. “But work that’s got real substance does make people feel, “There’s someone else out there who relates to my experience, or who just helped me understand my own experience a little bit better.” And I think that’s still got enormous value.”

— Edward Norton

83. “If two people are at completely different stages in their spiritual life, that can present a real problem.”

— Edward Norton

84. “Everyone keeps saying the western’s dead, but it’s not.”

— Edward Norton

85. “On the downside, to paraphrase Thom Yorke talking about the music business, we’re still having to deal with the stench of the last fart of the dying corpse of this regressive vision that America is a white, middle-aged, male, conservative country.”

— Edward Norton

86. “Most of what I know about environmental conservation I learned from my father, who has been a leader within the movement for over 30 years.”

— Edward Norton

87. “Look, you’ve got a generation of people coming along who are going to form their own new relationship with the idea of supporting the causes that they care about or changing the world. And these people are not going to do it the way our parents do it.”

— Edward Norton

88. “You can do things in twin scenes now you couldn’t before. You can implement actual moving cameras.”

— Edward Norton

89. “Just because you’ve made a couple movies, you’ve done some good movies, you’ve been nominated for some Academy Awards, whatever, nobody’s entitled. It’s a business. If they don’t see it, I can think they’re wrong, but I’m not entitled to a $15 million budget to make a film.”

— Edward Norton

90. “People say you can’t make movies about your politics or the environment. And, generally speaking, I completely divide those sides of my brain.”

— Edward Norton

91. “You dream as an actor’s director of letting moments breathe through two-shots.”

— Edward Norton

92. “Most of the movies that I’ve made that I really felt good about and cared about made very little money anyway, so I’m not particularly worried about people downloading and sharing them.”

— Edward Norton

93. “If I’m trying to put size on for a role, then I don’t do much running.”

— Edward Norton

94. “I think the consensus among our generation and people younger than us is that we do have a defining challenge in the moment, so I do like being involved in something bigger than the finger-doodling I do in art. It stimulates your brain in certain ways.”

— Edward Norton

95. “If you try to make interesting films, you’re going to be disappointed most of the time. I choose just not to look at it that way.”

— Edward Norton

96. “Sometimes their oppression of emotion and the weird way it comes out is more interesting than painting it in bold primary colors.”

— Edward Norton

97. “I read a lot of scripts and so many are clearly a knockoff of one familiar genre or another.”

— Edward Norton

98. “At this point in my life I’m not bent on proving anything, really.”

— Edward Norton

99. “A lot of why I do something is just the novelty of the experience.”

— Edward Norton

100. “I think technology is having a democratising effect on film.”

— Edward Norton