Top 160 Viggo Mortensen Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Life is short and the older you get, the more you feel it. Indeed, the shorter it is. People lose their capacity to walk, run, travel, think, and experience life. I realise how important it is to use the time I have.”

— Viggo Mortensen

2. “To be an artist, you don’t have to compose music or paint or be in the movies or write books. It’s just a way of living. It has to do with paying attention, remembering, filtering what you see and answering back, participating in life.”

— Viggo Mortensen

3. “I have a work ethic. If I say I’m going to do something, I do it.”

— Viggo Mortensen

4. “You should always do the things in life that are both interesting and make you afraid.”

— Viggo Mortensen

5. “You do need to get lucky, no matter how talented you are.”

— Viggo Mortensen

6. “When you’re under stress as a human being, you behave oddly and your relationships with people become strained.”

— Viggo Mortensen

7. “There’s no excuse to be bored. Sad, yes. Angry, yes. Depressed, yes. Crazy, yes. But there’s no excuse for boredom, ever.”

— Viggo Mortensen

8. “Travel is one of the best anti-war weapons that there are. I’ve been to Iran, and if you’re there you see little kids, cops, old people, cemeteries. Once you see that, you can’t say, ‘Oh, Iran, let’s bomb them.’”

— Viggo Mortensen

9. “I think if you don’t say something it’s lying by omission. I personally think it’s immoral.”

— Viggo Mortensen

10. “I have a multicultural background, so I tend to have an open mind about things, and I find other cultures interesting.”

— Viggo Mortensen

11. “Be kind. It’s worthwhile to make an effort to learn about other people and figure out what you might have in common with them.”

— Viggo Mortensen

12. “I think every family is dysfunctional, and some manage to control it better than others.”

— Viggo Mortensen

13. “What art does is it makes you feel alive and makes you feel like you’re connected.”

— Viggo Mortensen

14. “As you get older, you get stuck in your ways; just as you become stiffer physically, you also become stiffer mentally and more narrow-minded unless you make a conscious effort to keep yourself flexible.”

— Viggo Mortensen

15. “You can’t really go back to where you came from. I don’t think any of us can.”

— Viggo Mortensen

16. “I like naturally occurring film grain, and what happens to film when it’s under- and over-exposed.”

— Viggo Mortensen

17. “When there is conflict, it’s good to step away, even for five minutes, because you could say terrible things that you can’t take back, so it’s best to walk away.”

— Viggo Mortensen

18. “I think that every person has many, many people inside of them. We change our personality depending on who we are talking to or what situation we are in.”

— Viggo Mortensen

19. “You know, real life doesn’t just suddenly resolve itself. You have to keep working at it. Democracy, marriage, friendship. You can’t just say, ‘She’s my best friend.’ That’s not a given, it’s a process.”

— Viggo Mortensen

20. “Photography, painting or poetry – those are just extensions of me, how I perceive things; they are my way of communicating.”

— Viggo Mortensen

21. “I’m not that involved in personal grooming. But I try not to be offensive to people.”

— Viggo Mortensen

22. “People like to pigeonhole you. It’s easier.”

— Viggo Mortensen

23. “I don’t speak up about something unless I feel strongly about it and until I’ve researched a subject extensively and have an informed decision about it.”

— Viggo Mortensen

24. “You don’t have to make something that people call art. Living is an artistic activity, there is an art to getting through the day.”

— Viggo Mortensen

25. “Life is short and the older you get, the more you feel it. Indeed, the shorter it is.”

— Viggo Mortensen

26. “Having a mixed background and feeling a little bit like a fish out of water in most places can be a benefit.”

— Viggo Mortensen

27. “I have friends who I get along with who I know get very uncomfortable being alone, unless they’re with people, talking all the time. Whether it’s on the phone, or in person, they’re never by themselves. Whereas I could be alone for months.”

— Viggo Mortensen

28. “It’s true that I have a wide range of interests. I like to write and paint and make music and go walking on my own and garden. In fact, gardening is probably what I enjoy doing more than anything else.”

— Viggo Mortensen

29. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from traveling, it’s that it is definitely more important how you are than where you are. You can say, ‘Oh, I hate X city, I hate that country, or I prefer this city,’ but it’s a little bit up to you to find some kind of happiness.”

— Viggo Mortensen

30. “People are becoming more intimately acquainted with people who are different than them – it’s not so unusual anymore.”

— Viggo Mortensen

31. “On a practical level, poetry isn’t something anybody has really made a great living at. I might sell some books and, once in a while, someone might pay to hear me read.”

— Viggo Mortensen

32. “In a movie, you’re raw material, just a hue of some color and the director makes the painting.”

— Viggo Mortensen

33. “I was born in New York but as a baby moved to Venezuela and Argentina. I’ve also lived in Denmark, where my father’s from. I’ve traveled a lot, and having that sort of background probably increased the chance that I was going to remain curious as an adult about people who are different.”

— Viggo Mortensen

34. “Nobody really knows anybody completely, even if they’ve been married to ’em for 53 years, you know?”

— Viggo Mortensen

35. “As far as money goes, there’s a saying in Denmark: ‘Your last suit doesn’t have any pockets.’ You can’t take it with you. You can make all the money you want, but who cares?”

— Viggo Mortensen

36. “The first decade of your life is really important; it’s formative.”

— Viggo Mortensen

37. “To be honest, I don’t really care about any pope. It’s not something I think about much, to be quite honest with you.”

— Viggo Mortensen

38. “I was raised speaking English and Spanish. And I also speak Danish. And I can get by in French and Italian. I’ve acted in Spanish and English, but when something has to do with emotions, sometimes I feel I can get to the heart of the matter better in Spanish.”

— Viggo Mortensen

39. “Once you learn the idea of what a good guy is, you want your dad to be a good guy, and when your dad lets you down and doesn’t act like a good guy, it’s disappointing and can make you angry as you see it happen, which is beautiful and very believable.”

— Viggo Mortensen

40. “We all have secrets, some secrets bigger than others, is a normal human thing.”

— Viggo Mortensen

41. “I’ve been naked physically in movies – but it’s a whole other thing to be naked emotionally in a way that’s not just a distraction or a character.”

— Viggo Mortensen

42. “I like stories that leave you wanting more, leave you wondering, but don’t tell you everything.”

— Viggo Mortensen

43. “I’d like to, when it’s all said and done, say that I have at least a few stories that I feel proud of.”

— Viggo Mortensen

44. “I’m not afraid of death, but I resent it. I think it’s unfair and irritating. Every time I see something beautiful, I not only want to return to it, but it makes me want to see other beautiful things. I know I’m not going to get to all the places I want to go.”

— Viggo Mortensen

45. “Some people who like dogs don’t like cats, but I’m not like that.”

— Viggo Mortensen

46. “Kids are shy and they often don’t want to make eye contact or say “thank you.””

— Viggo Mortensen

47. “I have a publishing company of books by me and books of others. It drew people to poetry readings and photo exhibitions and painting exhibitions that I’ve been doing for years before that.”

— Viggo Mortensen

48. “When I heard Puerto Ricans in New York City, it sounded very strange. And the first time I heard someone from Spain, I thought they had a speech impediment!”

— Viggo Mortensen

49. “When we shot ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ we had special permission to film in wild areas of New Zealand that could be accessed only by helicopter. They would drop us off and we would work all day, and they’d pick us up and take us out again.”

— Viggo Mortensen

50. “You have a moral obligation to finish the job you said you would do.”

— Viggo Mortensen