Top 35 William Hurt Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You have to create a track record of breaking your own mold, or at least other people’s idea of that mold.”

— William Hurt

2. “The greatest single human gift is the ability to chase down our dreams.”

— William Hurt

3. “Sometimes people call me a success for all the reasons that make me think I’m a failure.”

— William Hurt

4. “The Alexander Technique has helped me to undo knots, unblock energy and deal with almost paralysing stage fright.”

— William Hurt

5. “But I am not going to live for ever. And the more I know it, the more amazed I am by being here at all.”

— William Hurt

6. “I am so thrilled by the privilege of life, and yet at the same time I know that I have to let it go.”

— William Hurt

7. “The simple fact of existence, of being aware that you are aware; this to me is the most astounding fact.”

— William Hurt

8. “When I look at a person, or a character, it is in every case the beginning of an endless journey. And I don’t suppose I know where that starts. I know that I have to, like every other person, make decisions and have opinions. But I’m real careful to not judge crassly or cheaply someone else’s life.”

— William Hurt

9. “I think acting can bring you closer to yourself and help you understand other people.”

— William Hurt

10. “Being a father, being a friend, those are the things that make me feel successful.”

— William Hurt

11. “I’m not comfortable with walking the red carpet in a tuxedo and seeing all the women with their boobs pushed up and all the men dressed as penguins – particularly when the subject of your film is the nature of violence and humanity.”

— William Hurt

12. “It was the moment I learned acting is not acting out. After that light went on, I spent the rest of my life trying to figure out how to make other people realize it.”

— William Hurt

13. “Great risks come in long term, tremendously assiduous, very courageous study.”

— William Hurt

14. “I have a film I want to direct. Gena Rowlands was going to do it with me a long time ago. It’s about an older woman who’s running a ranch in the west the old fashioned way.”

— William Hurt

15. “Being famous is not something that would make me feel successful – unless one was striving for mediocrity.”

— William Hurt

16. “I need six weeks of rehearsal and women need nine months and it took me 15 years to figure that out.”

— William Hurt

17. “I was a science fiction junkie for a long time.”

— William Hurt

18. “I’ve been delighted by Cannes and Toronto but I keep saying I don’t know how good we’re going to be received in America because that’s where it’s most challenging.”

— William Hurt

19. “I very much prefer the balance in a scene to standing out and so you have to make a decision.”

— William Hurt

20. “I just looked at him because I want to be looking in someone’s eyes when I die.”

— William Hurt

21. “The perfection in theater is that it’s over the second it’s done.”

— William Hurt

22. “The amount of financial and imaginative energy that’s put into mediocrity is just amazing, which I find to be fundamentally offensive as a human being.”

— William Hurt

23. “All I know is that my best work has come out of being committed and happy.”

— William Hurt

24. “Not to be offensive, not to be capricious, not to be arbitrary, not to be neurotic, not to be an actor outer, you’re just trying to get in and you’re given so little time to get in gently, but it’s always hard.”

— William Hurt

25. “Also CSPAN is really the great treasure of the media as far as getting information.”

— William Hurt

26. “You don’t look at it as the size of the role. Quantity is not the point. You can be as thorough in 30 seconds as you can in three hours.”

— William Hurt

27. “And I don’t want to use my troubles as an example of what to do and what not to do.”

— William Hurt

28. “I want to prove a point. That point is, actors are artists, not narcissists necessarily.”

— William Hurt

29. “It just seems like that because I do a lot of independent films that don’t get to the mainstream.”

— William Hurt

30. “I listen to XM radio because I can get so many overseas news stations.”

— William Hurt

31. “What’s really frustrating with movies is the lack of improvement.”

— William Hurt

32. “People who have expertise or the luck to have rehearsal time with cameras have it over people who don’t.”

— William Hurt

33. “But it’s also another myth to think that you should be as tight as a drum and not have any frailties or fragilities.”

— William Hurt

34. “Heroes to me are guys that sit in libraries. They absorb knowledge and then the risks they take are calculated on the basis of the courage it took to become replete with knowledge.”

— William Hurt

35. “I demand minimal for paid rehearsal and not always six weeks either.”

— William Hurt

36. “I know what I love about acting – and it’s the creative process.”

— William Hurt

37. “David Cronenberg knows what we actors do as artists.”

— William Hurt

38. “If you’re lucky, and not a lot of actors are these days, you get the chance to create a character.”

— William Hurt