Top 120 John Malkovich Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Well, I like to have fun at work.”

— John Malkovich

2. “And if you say a word about this over the radio, the next wings you see will belong to the flies buzzing over your rotting corpse.”

— John Malkovich

3. “Failure’s a natural part of life.”

— John Malkovich

4. “I don’t understand how somebody wouldn’t have a sense of humor about themselves.”

— John Malkovich

5. “The world is ruled by violence, or at least the imminent threat of violence. It always has been.”

— John Malkovich

6. “People get up, they go to work, they have their lives, but you’ll never see the headlines say, ‘Six billion people got along rather well today.’ You’ll have the headline about the 30 people who shot each other.”

— John Malkovich

7. “Every country has their problems.”

— John Malkovich

8. “People always say life is short. I’ve never been convinced of that – mine seems to have a tendency to go on and on.”

— John Malkovich

9. “If you don’t interfere with me, I’ll always do something really good.”

— John Malkovich

10. “I’ve permitted myself to learn and to fail with some regularity. And that is probably the one thing I was given, and that I’m still grateful for.”

— John Malkovich

11. “There’s no worse feeling in the world than realizing the play you’ve directed doesn’t work.”

— John Malkovich

12. “I’m not a psychiatrist. I’m not treating patients.”

— John Malkovich

13. “When you think of how history is revealed, we know certain things to be facts at certain periods of time, which turn out not to be so factual as time marches on.”

— John Malkovich

14. “I don’t like things too overstated in the cut or too perfect.”

— John Malkovich

15. “I prefer to conduct my life based on how I treat people.”

— John Malkovich

16. “I’m not a very skeptical person.”

— John Malkovich

17. “I don’t need to be liked.”

— John Malkovich

18. “Nothing you do particularly matters. But I’m not sure that’s a great excuse for doing it poorly.”

— John Malkovich

19. “The ghosts you chase you never catch.”

— John Malkovich

20. “Some people die before their time so that others can live. It’s a cornerstone of civilization.”

— John Malkovich

21. “I don’t lose my temper very often now, and if I do, it’s well deserved.”

— John Malkovich

22. “My life before children I don’t really remember. I’ve heard references to it, but I really don’t remember.”

— John Malkovich

23. “Utopia means elsewhere.”

— John Malkovich

24. “I wouldn’t describe myself as lacking in confidence, but I would just say that – the ghosts you chase you never catch.”

— John Malkovich

25. “Sigmund Freud said we act out our own dreams, but if you are only an actor you are not acting out your own dream. You are simply participating in someone else’s dream.”

— John Malkovich

26. “There will be people who hate everything you do. And some people will really love it. But that’s not really different from the people who really hate it.”

— John Malkovich

27. “I don’t remember my life before I had children.”

— John Malkovich

28. “A dog that has rabies probably will do things it wouldn’t do if it didn’t have rabies. But that doesn’t change the fact that it has rabies.”

— John Malkovich

29. “If you’re too smart it can limit you because you spend so much time thinking that you don’t do anything.”

— John Malkovich

30. “Most of the women that I like have a haunted quality – they’re sort of like women who live in a haunted house by themselves.”

— John Malkovich

31. “I can see how, given a certain degree of sensitivities, proclivities and rage, I could have ended up differently.”

— John Malkovich

32. “I was a very good baseball player and football player as a kid.”

— John Malkovich

33. “I don’t throw things or yell.”

— John Malkovich

34. “I am inspired by the appearance of a bohemian of the new millennium.”

— John Malkovich

35. “Art is not disposable. If you want it, you have to hold it and smell it and touch it and read the credits and enjoy it and put it on your wall.”

— John Malkovich

36. “I don’t have a great intellect, and I can’t compete with people who do. I feel certain things. And all I know, and all I can do, is what I feel.”

— John Malkovich

37. “I was a very good baseball and football player, but my father always told me I was much more interested in how I looked playing baseball or football than in actually playing. There’s great truth in that.”

— John Malkovich

38. “I’m a little bit of a fabric lunatic.”

— John Malkovich

39. “Anybody doing something brings something to it. It’s not for me to say if it’s “growth”. Just by the nature of everyone has a different take on the material. Some people would.”

— John Malkovich

40. “I know I have a fairly strong feminine side. I find myself really distanced from male behavior.”

— John Malkovich

41. “I don’t mind tracksuits. At the track.”

— John Malkovich

42. “You know, I’m really not interested in someone telling me that something’s good or bad.”

— John Malkovich

43. “Of course it’s trivial, but then most things are.”

— John Malkovich

44. “Along with the good qualities, if someone isn’t vulnerable I can’t be around them to a certain extent. And I don’t mean vulnerable to me or vulnerable to me in a sexual way. I just mean vulnerable, period.”

— John Malkovich

45. “I’ve always been an avid reader. Everyone in my family read a lot. Considering we were from a little town, we were pretty literate.”

— John Malkovich

46. “You can be a mason and build 50 buildings, but it doesn’t mean you can design one.”

— John Malkovich

47. “Politics is not really my thing.”

— John Malkovich

48. “I don’t have a saviour or a royal family.”

— John Malkovich

49. “I think people seem to sort of associate me with danger. And I don’t see that at all.”

— John Malkovich

50. “And may the best of you – for it will only be the best of you, and even then only in the rarest and briefest moments – succeed in framing that most basic of questions, ‘how do we live?’”

— John Malkovich