Denzel Washington Quotes

“Don't get all sentimental on me, Makes me think I'm gonna die.”

“You will never see a U-Haul behind a hearse.”

“If you don't trust the pilot, don't go.”

“It's not easy for me to admit that I've been standing in the same place for 18 years.”

“The last few years I've been saying I was ready to quit. It wasn't that interesting to me. Now that I'm directing, it's all new again.”

“You pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too. That's a part of it.”

“It's important for us to tell our stories.”

“I played Othello, but I didn't sit around thinking how Laurence Olivier did it when he played it. That wouldn't do me any good.”

“I don't feel pressure, because I do what I want to do. I don't feel pressure at all. I've never done any movies because I thought this was what somebody wanted me to do. I'm a bit more, for lack of a better word, selfish than that. But like I say in the movie, you do what you have to do so that you can do what you want to do.”

“Do what you gotta do so you can do what you wanna do.”

“A man once told me that you step out of your door in the morning, and you are already in trouble. The only question is are you on top of that trouble or not?”

“When you don't understand something, you label it and condemn it" (94) - Danny Glover, "The Fundamental Things”

“Every punch that's thrown is mine. Every punch that's caught, I catch.”

“If you have an enemy, then learn and know your enemy, don't just be mad at him or her.”

“If it ain't on a page, it ain't on a stage.”

“Got to be who you are in this world, no matter what.”

“I'm very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That's my cultural historical background, my genetic make-up, but it's not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.”

“It's not what you know, it's what you can prove.”

“As the filmmaker, yes, I have to look out for everybody. But I don't have to know everybody's approach.”

“After directing the first film it feels kind of tricky being back to being in front of the camera, because I've always got one eye over there, kind of thinking of what they are doing, and how the shot is being composed. I think it takes a couple of films to just get back to just being an actor.”

“I try to encourage actors to work harder off screen because that's where you find things.”

“Dreams without goals, are just dreams and they ultimately fuel disappointment.”

“That's what I tell young actors. "You don't have to compromise. Go do some theater and wait for an appropriate role."”

“Hate, hatred for yourself, for other people, will confine you, but love can set you free.”

“What we did [shooting "Fences"] was we got young students from Carnegie Mellon, the acting and theater students, and we had them as our understudies. I told them, "You have to be off book and be ready. If Viola [Davis] has to leave you have to jump in."”