Top 90 Val Kilmer Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “It hurts. I miss my kids. I miss my kids in so many ways that I can’t explain.”

— Val Kilmer

2. “There is no normal life, there’s just life. You live it.”

— Val Kilmer

3. “I saw the horizon. It’s out there. And though I may not ever be able to touch it, it’s worth reaching for.”

— Val Kilmer

4. “Without deadlines and restrictions I just tend to become preoccupied with other things.”

— Val Kilmer

5. “It’s so early do you want some coffee or something?”

— Val Kilmer

6. “Hollywood’s like a warehouse. It’s just a place that you go. What’s interesting in the warehouse has to do with the creative people.”

— Val Kilmer

7. “God wants us to walk but the devil sends a limo.”

— Val Kilmer

8. “New Mexico is my home. It has never been anything but home. The ranch has rivers and canyon, everything imaginable. I can ride, hunt and fish. At the same time, ranching is grueling, difficult work. It’s like acting, to be successful at it, you have to work hard. I take it very seriously.”

— Val Kilmer

9. “The trick to being a good actor is getting so involved in your character that the camera disappears, the 50 bored guys eating doughnuts disappear, friends disappear. To get to that point when you don’t have to think about it, you’re just acting and reacting in those circumstances.”

— Val Kilmer

10. “I have two children and they’re young yet but all of the children that I know really inspire me.”

— Val Kilmer

11. “My first girlfriend in high school, I had a girlfriend in grade school, but my first girlfriend in high school was Mare Winningham, very fine actress.”

— Val Kilmer

12. “Life is precious, and when someone dies it’s an opportunity to realise how precious it is. My brother drowned when I was 17. He was 15. I think I grew from that. My father didn’t. It really crushed him.”

— Val Kilmer

13. “Unless a Western’s made money – doesn’t matter who made the money, doesn’t matter what the subject is – if the last one didn’t make any money, you can’t make another one for a four-year period. Westerns more than any genre.”

— Val Kilmer

14. “I think death is just a transition to another state of consciousness.”

— Val Kilmer

15. “When you dream dreams when you’re young, do them before you have a reason not to. When you are young, that is when all the dreams come true. Believe me do them all. Nothing bad will happen to you and all things good.”

— Val Kilmer

16. “It’s important to be yourself. What art does for everyone, helps you understand yourself and in a distilled way, whether it’s a painting or a scene in acting or a joke. It distills something about everyday life that can be important to you.”

— Val Kilmer

17. “There was such a relationship between the buffalo and the American Indian – the Indians would eat them, live inside their pelts, use every part of the body. There was almost no separation between the people and the animals.”

— Val Kilmer

18. “Give me the compliments. I love compliments. I was born modest, but it wore off.”

— Val Kilmer

19. “I’m a character actor, but I look like a leading man.”

— Val Kilmer

20. “Art is a way to get strength from something that is life-affirming. It can be quite violent and still be life-affirming.”

— Val Kilmer

21. “I don’t make any pretense about being normal. I’m not.”

— Val Kilmer

22. “A wonderful but kind of a terrible truth about acting is that you actually get to a point where you become content with an impossible task: it is really impossible to properly prepare. You kind of have to start over every time.”

— Val Kilmer

23. “I liked being Doc Holliday. It’s fun to be insightful and aristocratic, to stand up for your friend and make sacrifices for him. It was fun to be arrogant like he was and have the goods to back it up. He was a very noble character. Although, let’s not forget, he did kill a lot of people.”

— Val Kilmer

Featured in: Fun Quotes

24. “You will see this book takes twists and turns. Welcome to the pinball machine of my mind. Here, authenticity lives with eccentricity. A delicious diet, if a bit unsteady. My poems, my puns, my spiritual side trips, and the names of friends, both famous and infamous, dropped along the way – I can’t stop myself. I can’t help myself. So come along. It’s dangerous, but indulge me. We will travel with lightning speed because I’ve led a lightning-speed life.”

— Val Kilmer

25. “Daryl Hannah likes to goof around with fashion, but she does have pretty impeccable taste.”

— Val Kilmer

26. “I don’t think of my life as a cliche, but I’m a cliche eccentric. Complete with a strange name – I mean, who’s named Val? How many Vals do you know? I mean, really?”

— Val Kilmer

27. “It may or may not sound pretentious. But I’ve turned down, consciously and specifically, many jobs I knew would have been a pretty surefire way to go about making a lot of money, being recognized and gaining power in the industry.”

— Val Kilmer

28. “My father was raised in the mountains of New Mexico, and he picked cotton for a dollar a day. He was working for the family from the time he was 7.”

— Val Kilmer

29. “Postman is a media analyst and his theory is that television doesn’t influence our culture, but that it is our culture and the presidency and anything that relies on television.”

— Val Kilmer

30. “Mark Twain had a way of telling stories that shifts your consciousness away from labels.”

— Val Kilmer

31. “Again, in Wag the Dog, war has to be declared by an act of congress. But if you go to war, you don’t have to declare war. You’re just at war and we did that, which is not legal.”

— Val Kilmer

32. “Mark Twain is as big as America. He really is.”

— Val Kilmer

33. “You just don’t understand humility until you have children and get divorced. I was very hurt and very angry and so was she. But when kids are involved, you either become friends with respect or you become mortal enemies.”

— Val Kilmer

34. “It’s a really weird thing, modern divorce. I found out I was getting divorced on television. That was kind of weird.”

— Val Kilmer

35. “Hollywood is wonderful, but it does eat its young.”

— Val Kilmer

36. “I don’t believe in death. I think it’s just a state of mind.”

— Val Kilmer

37. “The Secret Service is a strange group. They don’t really have a leader. It’s not set up like a military. Each one is supposed to be able to act like a leader when something comes up.”

— Val Kilmer

38. “Khalil Gibran says a soul mate is the guardian of the other person’s solitude.”

— Val Kilmer

39. “You just don’t understand humility until you have children and get divorced.”

— Val Kilmer

40. “I was in love with Tina Goodman since I was three and her parents came popping out of the trash cans. I think it made a big impression on me.”

— Val Kilmer

41. “I never cultivated a personality. Almost everyone who is really famous has cultivated a personality.”

— Val Kilmer

42. “It’s the first time that I’ve ever had an art show based on a film, but it’s a photography collage.”

— Val Kilmer

43. “So it’s always helped me to have a foundation, an ideal to strive for and goals. It’s hard for me to be disciplined and plan things.”

— Val Kilmer

44. “YouTube is a new experience for me-someone threw a laptop in front of me and showed me Nic Cage going mad, which has got to be the funniest thing on YouTube. He’s so courageous.”

— Val Kilmer

45. “Peter Sellers was just a brilliant actor, and also comedic.”

— Val Kilmer

46. “That’s the joy of art – it should be dangerous and challenging but it’s just art – it’s safe.”

— Val Kilmer

47. “I love that Bob Dylan asked me to be in the first movie he wrote.”

— Val Kilmer

48. “Interesting characters are troubled characters. The only problem I’ve had in my business is very few people – unfortunately, very vocal – confusing the difficult role that I play with me. I play these guys, but I’m not like them. I’ve been accused of bein.”

— Val Kilmer

49. “There are only three reasons to do a movie: the cast, the director, the role. Like I say, you live in a minute of screen time, but to prepare for the minute takes much more than a day. You’d better be excited about what those moments are, even if they’re the hardest moments. Or the smallest.”

— Val Kilmer

50. “I don’t know at what point you stop hurting and start healing.”

— Val Kilmer