Top 35 Steve McQueen Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “I live for myself and answer to nobody.”

— Steve McQueen

2. “Racing is life. Everything else is just waiting.”

— Steve McQueen

3. “Often the best way to relax is just to go back to work.”

— Steve McQueen

4. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

— Steve McQueen

5. “When I believe in something, I fight like hell for it.”

— Steve McQueen

6. “The world is as good as you are. You’ve got to learn to like yourself first.”

— Steve McQueen

7. “I believe in me. I’m a little screwed up, but I’m beautiful.”

— Steve McQueen

8. “I don’t want to talk about nonsense because it doesn’t help me.”

— Steve McQueen

9. “Every time I start thinking the world is all bad, then I start seeing people out there having a good time on motorcycles. It makes me take another look.”

— Steve McQueen

10. “Sometimes you have to bend with the breeze or you break.”

— Steve McQueen

11. “Anything that doesn’t make sense, I don’t want to give too much of my brain to.”

— Steve McQueen

12. “I worked hard, and if you work hard you get the goodies.”

— Steve McQueen

13. “Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting.”

— Steve McQueen

14. “When a horse learns to buy martinis, I’ll learn to like horses.”

— Steve McQueen

15. “I need to have a reason why I’m doing something. Otherwise I’m lost.”

— Steve McQueen

16. “Nobody trusts anyone, or why did they put tilt on a pinball machine...”

— Steve McQueen

17. “The Navajos have a saying they live by: ‘A land where there is time enough and room enough.’ I want that, too.”

— Steve McQueen

18. “One of the things that make motorcycling so great is because it never fails to give you a feeling of freedom and adventure.”

— Steve McQueen

19. “The camera movement should be like a cat jumping onto a table – with just enough amount of effort and that’s it. That’s enough.”

— Steve McQueen

20. “I liked being in the Marines. They gave me discipline I could live with. By the time I got out, I was able to cope with things on a more realistic level.”

— Steve McQueen

21. “The person is being confrontational.”

— Steve McQueen

22. “Acting is like racing, you need the same concentration. You have to reach inside you and bring forth a lot of broken glass. That’s painful.”

— Steve McQueen

23. “I always feel I’m an amateur. I don’t most of the time know what I’m doing.”

— Steve McQueen

24. “If I hadn’t made it as an actor, I might have wound up a hood...”

— Steve McQueen

25. “People try to contain things by putting them into categories. I don’t.”

— Steve McQueen

26. “I find it difficult to breathe when l’m in the space. There seems to be no oxygen. I want to put people into a situation where they’re sensitive to themselves watching the piece.”

— Steve McQueen

27. “Stardom equals financial success and financial success equals security. I’ve spent too much of my life feeling insecure. I still have nightmares about being poor, of everything I own just vanishing away. Stardom means that can’t happen.”

— Steve McQueen

28. “I think as an actor, you’re more like a dancer, and you have to use your body. I don’t understand all these questions about nudity. It’s a nonsense. He’s an actor, an artist, so get on with it.”

— Steve McQueen

29. “Stardom equals freedom. It’s the only equation that matters.”

— Steve McQueen

30. “There is no right or wrong angle for something. The idea of putting the camera in an unfamiliar position is simply to do with film language. Sometimes it is spectacular, sometimes it is ugly, sometimes it is uninteresting.”

— Steve McQueen

31. “When I walk out into the street or go to the toilet, I don’t think of myself as being black. Of course, other people think of me as black when I walk into a pub. Obviously being black is a part of me.”

— Steve McQueen

32. “I deal with certain things in my work because of who I am. I make work in order to make people think.”

— Steve McQueen

33. “I want people to do what they want to do because when they feel comfortable it seems to translate better on screen. It is when you put people in a straitjacket that it doesn’t seem to translate very well at all. The individuals I work with are usually people I know.”

— Steve McQueen

34. “As far as art and filmmaking is concerned, I don’t see there’s any separation; it’s just one continuous thing.”

— Steve McQueen

35. “I love creating images, of course, because I’m an artist.”

— Steve McQueen

36. “I really don’t like to act. At the beginning, back in ’51, I had to force myself to stick with it. I was real uncomfortable, real uncomfortable.”

— Steve McQueen

37. “I’m not sure that acting is something for a grown man to be doing.”

— Steve McQueen

38. “The best thing about making films is the time spent making them. When I see works that I’ve made, I always think what a great time I had making them. The films remind me of that time.”

— Steve McQueen