Demian Quotes

I don't hide or play stupid games.

You don't need tons of money to create art. You do need tons of money to be a part of show business. They are two different things.

When you shoot a film, you have very little time to waste, and I try to go into the character as soon as possible and stay there as much as I can.

Lincoln' is a powerful film. It's one of those epic films that talk about this very specific issue in history of the United States.

There is a film called 'A Separation.' If you see it playing, go see it. It's beautiful. It's so well written and the acting is amazing. It's one of those films that you would love to be a part of.

I left my parents' home when I was 22, I moved to New York with my ex-girlfriend. We did a film together with Raul Julia.

My two brothers and I grew up in the theater, going everywhere with my parents when they performed.

I am fond of music I think because it is so amoral. Everything else is moral and I am after something that isn't. I have always found moralizing intolerable.

I was lucky that audiences in Mexico liked my work. I was even luckier when I got to do movies and plays with my brothers.

I grew up in the theater. I began my career at 3. That was the first time I stepped onto a provisional stage.

I have been in the business long enough to know what an intense amount of work it takes to operate a theater company.

Whether you and I and a few others will renew the world some day remains to be seen. But within ourselves we must renew it each day.

You knew all along that your sanctioned world was only half the world, and you tried to suppress the other half the same way the priests and teachers do. You won't succeed. No one succeeds in this once he has begun to think.

For the first time in my life I tasted death, and death tasted bitter, for death is birth, is fear and dread of some terrible renewal.

Once you are able to make your request in such a way that you will be quite certain of its fulfillment, then the fulfillment will come.

There's good and bad everywhere in any aspect in life. The only people who we can't really trust are politicians. Because those guys lie to everybody and constantly.

An enlightened man had but one duty - to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope his way forward, no matter where it led.

Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them.

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.

Each man had only one genuine vocation to find the way to himself.

Within us there is someone who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we ourselves.

People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest. It was a scandal that a breed of fearless and sinister people ran around freely, so they attached a nickname and a myth to these people to get even with them, to make up for the many times they had felt afraid.

I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.

Gaze into the fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak... surrender to them. Don't ask first whether it's permitted, or would please your teachers or father or some god. You will ruin yourself if you do that.

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.

I don't believe in bad and good, I believe we are all a mix of both.

You are only afriad if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves. A whole society composed of men afraid of the unknown within them!

There is no reality except the one contained within us.

You must find your dream...but no dream lasts forever, each dream is followed by another, and one should not cling to any particular dream.

I live in my dreams — that's what you sense. Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. That's the difference.

There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.

I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. The God's name is Abraxas.

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross.

Every man's story is important, eternal and sacred. That is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous and worthy of every consideration.

We all have that capacity, to be two things. And after all I was named for both the devil and the angel. Demonio y angel. Dem-y-an.

At one time I had given much thought to why men were so very rarely capable of living for an ideal. Now I saw that many, no, all men were capable of dying for one.

When you do a film, all you want is to make the best film possible. You don't think about Oscars. But it's really flattering. Please, bring it on!

We have a demon, we have an angel inside, within our souls, and you just play with it, and sometimes the evil part of you wins the battle, in a very important decision, or in a bedtime, with your lover. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

The real secret to guacamole is that you use exactly the elements that you need, which is cilantro, onion, tomato, and jalapenos. And, of course, avocado.

What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

I realize that some people will not believe that a child of little more than ten years is capable of having such feelings. My story is not intended for them. I am telling it to those who have a better knowledge of man. The adult who has learned to translate a part of his feelings into thoughts notices the absence of these thoughts in a child, and therefore comes to believe that the child lacks these experiences, too. Yet rarely in my life have I felt and suffered as deeply as at that time.

There are some actors that are so gifted, that move you in such a way that every time you see their names again, you go and pay another ticket because you want to have that experience again.

Scarlett Johansson. I think people don't really realize how great of an actress that girl is. She's so beautiful and that distracts you from what she can do as an actor.

One wants to think that - and this is really a stupid thought - that through your art or whatever you do as an actor you can actually affect someone else's lives and thoughts or whatever.

I wanted to give my actor a break. I wanted to live and to learn English. I wanted to be anything, a cabdriver, a busboy, anything to keep me away from acting for a while.

As an actor, you know when you've got great material in front of you. When you're working, you think, 'Is this the one? The one that everyone will respond to and be moved by?' You pray that you have told the story well... that your peers will see it and audiences will love it.

As a young actor, I booked a movie in the U.S. I didn't speak any English at the time, so I learned my lines phonetically when I auditioned for it.

I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?