Top 50 Joe Eszterhas Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Don’t smoke. Don’t kill yourselves. Don’t maim yourselves. Tell your friends. Please don’t smoke.”

— Joe Eszterhas

2. “There are some young women movie stars who are doing it everywhere, smoking in every movie, sometimes even with placements with a pack of cigarettes.”

— Joe Eszterhas

3. “Your characters get angry at you if you speak about them and stop you from giving birth to them on the page in revenge. Real writers sit down and write. Wannabe writers sit around and talk.”

— Joe Eszterhas

4. “I have my own religious bond with the God in my own head.”

— Joe Eszterhas

5. “Bette Davis had a phrase that called it “cigarette smoking acting” .”

— Joe Eszterhas

6. “My father could have been deported because on his immigration application he said that he was a printer, obviously because he didn’t want them to be checking his writings.”

— Joe Eszterhas

7. “There’s no doubt in my mind that Bill Clinton will stop smoking cigars, will never smoke them again, as a result of what he did with that cigar.”

— Joe Eszterhas

8. “I was a militant smoker, and in my case, I think I particularly used smoking because what I felt was a kind of politically correct big brother assault on smoking.”

— Joe Eszterhas

9. “A cigarette in the hands of a Hollywood star onscreen is a gun aimed at a 12- or 14-year-old.”

— Joe Eszterhas

10. “Politics has become entertainment.”

— Joe Eszterhas

11. “Joe Lieberman was threatening censorship. What I’m arguing is that if the creative people in Hollywood themselves have a responsibility, have a moral responsibility in terms of smoking, not to show smoking in movies.”

— Joe Eszterhas

12. “Actors always loved props and-so instead of a hat or an umbrella, they feel really comfortable with a cigarette as a prop.”

— Joe Eszterhas

13. “Cigarettes, cigarettes were much tougher. Booze was tough And I had a real drinking problem before as we discovered in the hospital really, but the cigarettes are much tougher and to tell you the truth.”

— Joe Eszterhas

14. “Don’t break your own heart.”

— Joe Eszterhas

15. “Bill Klinton was the ultimate rock star as president. I don’t think as a result of his presidency we will ever have a rock star as president again. In the same way that we will never get involved in another Vietnam.”

— Joe Eszterhas

16. “I have been an accomplice to the murders of untold numbers of human beings. I am admitting this only because I have made a deal with God. Spare me, I said, and I will try to stop others from committing the same crimes I did.”

— Joe Eszterhas

17. “I was six when we came to this country. When I was 14 or so, I still had a lot of trouble with it.”

— Joe Eszterhas

18. “You must show how gruesome that death is because if you don’t, then you turn into some kind of comic book and pain, then death, doesn’t have a consequence, and pain doesn’t have a consequence.”

— Joe Eszterhas

19. “I think the main issue is that a lot of the stars today are very addicted, and they simply feel more comfortable smoking as they act.”

— Joe Eszterhas

20. “I think it’s terrible to show that to kids. It’s – I think you should – if you – if you do a piece where something violent happens and someone dies or is badly injured, you must show the pain.”

— Joe Eszterhas

21. “Every time I flicked channels, there I was, talking. I was talking too much and writing too little. So Naomi and I went to Hawaii. The phone was cut off and we lost touch. This gave me the chance to have a good think about my life.”

— Joe Eszterhas

22. “Before I would view Rob Reiner as this really annoying pest. Every time he’d come on TV or talking about smoking, I found my blood pressure go up. I just met-really met Rob for the first time last week and told him how much I admire him. He’s done more than anyone else in the industry.”

— Joe Eszterhas

23. “I will focus on smoking in movies and with the amount of time that I have left in the world, I will do the best I can to stop smoking in movies and also to help people stop smoking, just normal ordinary people who may need help.”

— Joe Eszterhas

24. “I haven’t really spoken to God since I was a boy and I’ve rediscovered god and prayer in the process and all of that has come together.”

— Joe Eszterhas

25. “I began my addiction when I was 12 years old. By the time 40, 45 years later, when it, you know, it threatened my life and maimed me in terms of my voice, I was so addicted that I was smoking four packs of cigarettes a day.”

— Joe Eszterhas

26. “No one is going to tell a movie star to smoke or not smoke because they can do whatever they want .”

— Joe Eszterhas

27. “I’ve seen Joe take on many battles, cancer being one of them, and the determination that he has, and he won’t stop, he’s not going to make one announcement and write one editorial and go away.”

— Joe Eszterhas

28. “I had read too many memoirs that were written after the writer or the director was past his or her prime.”

— Joe Eszterhas

29. “There are no crowds out there demanding to see smoking scenes in movies.”

— Joe Eszterhas

30. “I think that Hollywood is sort of guilty of having a moral blind eye on this subject. While at the same time, you know, being involved in a lot of liberal causes and being involved very militantly, Hollywood is, in fact, guilty of helping to addict people to smoke.”

— Joe Eszterhas

31. “I think to put death on screen where it isn’t that turns it into comic book time and there I think by desensitizing an audience, you really do open the possibility that someone is going to kill .”

— Joe Eszterhas

32. “I have only one loyalty – to my writing. I never wanted to be the head of a studio or a producer.”

— Joe Eszterhas

33. “Sirens wailed; the revolution had come to Harrisonville. Blood was flowing on Pearl Street.”

— Joe Eszterhas

34. “Certainly on a political and a legislative level, Bill Clinton was effective, but the example that he ultimately left, I think for posterity, tragically, is going to begin with that single paragraph lead with the White House intern.”

— Joe Eszterhas

35. “I was surprised by how warm the response was, even among studio heads, who said they really, we do have to do something about glamourization of smoking.”

— Joe Eszterhas

36. “From what I’ve been able to determine, many of our big stars are addicted to tobacco. They want to smoke in movies for the same reason I smoked as I wrote, which is that they think their performance is going to be better.”

— Joe Eszterhas

37. “Let’s make Joe Lieberman accountable for his rhetoric. Not a penny more until he ‘clarifies’ his positions to the satisfaction of our creative freedom.”

— Joe Eszterhas

38. “There are certainly a lot of sins to be taken on. To take on smoking and movies is a weighty enough thing, I think, and it’s one I’ve experienced, and it’s what’s caused me to live in-with my voice maimed for the rest of my life.”

— Joe Eszterhas

39. “Fact is we went on to do other things. But we still wanted to do our success like rock’n’roll stars.”

— Joe Eszterhas

40. “Anyone I think who – that would go through a cancer ward and would see the result of what smoking does, would never, ever think of smoking is sexy again.”

— Joe Eszterhas

41. “I just wanted to make sure that what I write is what appears on screen, to not have some idiot change it on its way to the screen.”

— Joe Eszterhas

42. “I started making a point earlier that women’s cancer rates are skyrocketing, and we have some women movie stars, young women movie stars, who are smoking in many of their movies.”

— Joe Eszterhas

43. “I always wanted to be a rock’n’roll star.”

— Joe Eszterhas

44. “Joe Lieberman frightens me. Why should we, an Hollywood voter, donate money to a man who threatens our creative freedom, our freedom of expression.”

— Joe Eszterhas

45. “From a writing point of view, you now have teams of screenwriters working with a director. What’s lost in the process is the power of that one heart, brain, gut and soul that makes something an original piece of writing.”

— Joe Eszterhas

46. “Cigarettes are not a part of human behaviour, they are a habit.”

— Joe Eszterhas

47. “I worry that we are approaching a time when that which is shocking is squeezed out by the Stalinism of political correctness.”

— Joe Eszterhas

48. “I always try to do true endings and that’s where I got into trouble always because Hollywood wants to do happy endings.”

— Joe Eszterhas

49. “Meanwhile, politics is about getting a candidate in front of the public as a star, politics as rock’n’roll, politics as a movie.”

— Joe Eszterhas

50. “If they gave a Nobel Peace Prize for work against big tobacco, not just in the industry, but also with the California tax initiative, Rob Reiner really deserves one.”

— Joe Eszterhas