Top 160 Viggo Mortensen Quotes (2025 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. “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

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

— Viggo Mortensen

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

— 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 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

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

— Viggo Mortensen

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

— Viggo Mortensen

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

— Viggo Mortensen

15. “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

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

— Viggo Mortensen

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

— Viggo Mortensen

18. “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

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

— Viggo Mortensen

20. “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

21. “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

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

— Viggo Mortensen

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

— Viggo Mortensen

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

— Viggo Mortensen

25. “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

26. “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

27. “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

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

— Viggo Mortensen

29. “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

30. “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

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

— Viggo Mortensen

32. “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

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

— Viggo Mortensen

34. “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

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

— Viggo Mortensen

36. “Yes, I would agree that America, just like Spain was in the 17th Century, is the main empire of the world and they are the ones who, on the surface, are the most pushy: pushing their language, pushing their culture – or what there is of it – pushing by force their system on others.”

— Viggo Mortensen

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

— 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. “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

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. “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

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

— Viggo Mortensen

44. “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

45. “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

46. “People will like to say that ‘Eastern Promises’ is brutal, but the only reason they say that is because the scenes stick with them. They are realistic. They are in-your-face and you see the consequences. It’s not a bunch of quick editing cuts.”

— Viggo Mortensen

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

— Viggo Mortensen

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

— Viggo Mortensen

49. “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

50. “Toronto Film Festival is one of those festivals where there are 400 movies, and unless you have a distributor who is super confident and puts a lot of money into it, sometimes movies can go unwatched or unnoticed.”

— Viggo Mortensen