Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Edward Norton, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Edward Norton quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 137 Edward Norton quotes for you to read and share.
I do subscribe to the maxim that generally comedy is like jazz. Either you get it or you don't. You can't learn it and you can't be taught it. I don't think that if you are not a funny person, you can fake it. -- Edward Norton
The Zionist Tulsa Jew who's pugnacious is a reality. I grew up around it. And I think it's really, really funny and surprising and unlikely. -- Edward Norton
I'm a Tulsa Jew and I have a religious upbringing. -- Edward Norton
I had a huge advantage with Edward Norton because he's directed a movie before, so one thing he appreciates is how hard my job is, he's very sensitive to that. We actually ended up finishing "Leaves of Grass" a day early. -- Edward Norton
You know, independent films have been institutionalized, practically. Every studio has got a boutique arthouse label. -- Edward Norton
I tend to relate to a character in terms of the arc: what's interesting is where he starts versus where he ends up. -- Edward Norton
As an actor, I don't have any politics. As an actor, I'm driven more by an authentic - I would say an obsessive-compulsive-disorder level-fixation on mimicry, tonality of voice, to literally imitate something until I can just disappear into it. -- Edward Norton
I just don't think most of us are aware how much of what we throw away ends up in the ocean, for starters. Plastic bags are among the worst. The US is actually falling behind the curve on that score. China and many other countries have already banned the production and use of thin plastic bags. -- Edward Norton
The thing I'm absolutely convinced of, no matter how crazy - technological the world is getting, is that people feel more connected through the good works. Entertainment, and the sort of soporific effect it has on people and their stress, is one thing. -- Edward Norton
I don't smoke and I don't want to smoke. I am not a fan of gratuitous smoking in films. -- Edward Norton
Instead of telling the world what you're eating for breakfast, you can use social networking to do something that's meaningful. -- Edward Norton
I think we really feel like Crowdrise could be something that, 20 years from now, people take for granted because that's just how you do it, like if you're going to raise money for something, that's how you do it. -- Edward Norton
I knew Danny DeVito and he knew me, so he wanted me to try Death to Smoochy. I loved that stuff and had a great time doing it. -- Edward Norton
The elegance of staying with a moment, without needing to stop and change all the lighting, made [the alternative] seem lazy and indulgent. -- Edward Norton
Look, you've got a generation of people coming along who are going to form their own new relationship with the idea of supporting the causes that they care about or changing the world. And these people are not going to do it the way our parents do it. -- Edward Norton
I've observed over and over that people seem to get a much deeper sense of fulfillment out of something they've done as an act of service than out of the things they do for themselves. -- Edward Norton
There is a lot of interesting product coming to market already. Bags and bottles and cups and such made of potato starch and other fully biodegradable materials. In some sense, plastic is more chemically complex. We ought to be able to simplify. -- Edward Norton
I think that the environmental movement is wisely moving away from a largely emotion-based argument for the spiritual or intrinsic value of Nature with a capital "N" and evolving toward a very hard-nosed case for the economic value of natural capital, ecosystem services, biodiversity, etc. -- Edward Norton
When I'm looking for Zen and I'm not saying this facetiously at all - I would really rather surf, scuba dive, or fly my plane. And, when I feel tension about the grind of work, it's not getting the money to make films versus making films that constitutes the grind, it's all this stuff. -- Edward Norton
I almost forgot what it's like to be proud of my government. -- Edward Norton
See, I don't get the sense that you need to direct at all. Sometimes I get the opposite sensation from you, that you're like, "I really should go do something else." But then you are drawn back in by a particular story, like a hangnail in the brain. -- Edward Norton
Anybody who is running a marathon or doing a walkathon, doing a fundraiser for their school, their company, by far it's guaranteed the easiest and most fun way to quickly set up a fundraising campaign and send it around to your friends and family. -- Edward Norton
I tend to have a kind of tunnel vision when I'm looking at an individual piece. -- Edward Norton
If you feel like someone just knows what this is about to their core, they're going to have that special confidence in it.You stop looking at the seams and they start inhabiting the same space and start interacting with each . -- Edward Norton
I don't flatter myself - I'm not a scientist, I'm not a conservation expert. -- Edward Norton
This place [USA] is exploding with young people who are - they're like Nietzsche's hammer - going to break everything and make something better. The creative energy in this country, and what people are coming up with is very hopeful. -- Edward Norton
You dream as an actor's director of letting moments breathe through two-shots. -- Edward Norton
Identical twins are endemically alike in many ways. -- Edward Norton
I like music, but I need to get outside more. -- Edward Norton
When you're working on a creative thing, everyone has an idea, and they're pushing it. The first time you work with anybody, you have to get comfortable with the way another person pushes hard for what they want. -- Edward Norton
I think the consensus among our generation and people younger than us is that we do have a defining challenge in the moment, so I do like being involved in something bigger than the finger-doodling I do in art. It stimulates your brain in certain ways. -- Edward Norton
I think a lot of people in their average day actually imagine two sides of a conversation at one point or another. I think that the mental trick of holding two sides of a conversation in your head is actually something that we all do. -- Edward Norton
But work that's got real substance does make people feel, "There's someone else out there who relates to my experience, or who just helped me understand my own experience a little bit better." And I think that's still got enormous value. -- Edward Norton
If I'm trying to put size on for a role, then I don't do much running. -- Edward Norton
For Keeping the Faith, I looked at [George ] Cukor's old films like The Philadelphia Story, stuff that's hilariously funny and really smart with a cutting critique in the humor, too. With this, when I read it, I was laughing a lot. -- Edward Norton
People think because I went to Yale that that implies privilege, and it is a privilege in the sense that it's an incredible opportunity. -- Edward Norton
To cite my own alma mater, it's shocking to me that Yale University can teach what it teaches at the Yale School of Environmental Studies and utterly fail to mirror those values in any way in its investment practices. -- Edward Norton
When you have a pipe salesman with a business called Macabee Pipes, I'd say you've got your tongue planted firmly in your cheek. -- Edward Norton
I like making movies for myself and my friends and people with my sensibility. -- Edward Norton
My greatest hope is that we transcend the most fearful thing, which is that we are rapidly degrading the ecological systems on this planet that support everything we are doing and all life on it. -- Edward Norton
I've already spent a lot of my life doing what makes me go. There's a life out there while I'm still young, able to move, able to just sit at peace in the water - I should be spending much more time doing that, rather than continuing to go through this artistic struggle. -- Edward Norton
The film industry needs to confront the physical footprint of the way films get made. -- Edward Norton
I do find myself drawn more to pieces that I feel are wrestling with the way that we're living now, what we're all going through. -- Edward Norton
When I was about 16 or 17, I had a teacher who took a group of us to the National Theater in Washington, D.C., and I saw Ian McKellen do his one-man show - I think it was called Acting Shakespeare - and it completely bombed me; it put the zap on my brain in a big way. -- Edward Norton
Life, like poker has an element of risk. It shouldn't be avoided. It should be faced. -- Edward Norton
Just because you've made a couple movies, you've done some good movies, you've been nominated for some Academy Awards, whatever, nobody's entitled. It's a business. If they don't see it, I can think they're wrong, but I'm not entitled to a $15 million budget to make a film. -- Edward Norton
Duality is not a story. Duality is just a complexity. -- Edward Norton
It's dismaying to see the unilateralism that the government is doing. -- Edward Norton
On the downside, to paraphrase Thom Yorke talking about the music business, we're still having to deal with the stench of the last fart of the dying corpse of this regressive vision that America is a white, middle-aged, male, conservative country. -- Edward Norton
What has always been most interesting about acting to me personally is that it affords you the chance to shift gears, both in terms of the experiences you get to have through doing it, but also the different kinds of things you get to represent. -- Edward Norton
The best films of any kind, narrative or documentary, provoke questions. -- Edward Norton
It's nice when someone knows their lines. -- Edward Norton
Basically, I think 21st century conservation is moving toward preserving ecosystems by dealing with the needs of people. -- Edward Norton
Well, I don't feel that I've played so many bad guys, and I'm rot really drawn to villains per se. I think a lot of people relate to some of my characters' inner struggles. -- Edward Norton
I like things that aren't superficially one thing or another. -- Edward Norton
I thought Rounders was a comic movie in its way. First time I directed a movie, I wanted to do a comedy. I don't like things that are superficially one thing or another, mainly. My favorite comedies are really smart, too, and have a lot of levels to them as well. -- Edward Norton
It must be good to be in Germany and France, because I have completely forgotten what it is like to be proud of your government. -- Edward Norton
Sometimes creativity is a compulsion, not an ambition. -- Edward Norton
With Edward Norton you'd never say, "This is the one we're going with whether you like it or not." It has to be agreed upon. -- Edward Norton
If I ever have to stop taking the subway, I'm gonna have a heart attack. -- Edward Norton
I don't think you should sit around and wait for people to give you an opportunity to express yourself or do your work, or whatever. Actors have to be producers and writers have to be producers. -- Edward Norton
As we say in the sewer, time and tide wait for no man. -- Edward Norton
What we set out to do with this movie [Leaves of Grass] was to create something that was funny and serious and had large tonal ambitions. A movie that could be poignant and funny, and suddenly quite violent. To have a character utterly sideswiped, and to learn that life is about balance. -- Edward Norton
If you try to make interesting films, you're going to be disappointed most of the time. I choose just not to look at it that way. -- Edward Norton
If there's a criteria that really gets me interested in a work besides any type of personal interaction with the theme, it's if I feel like this is the right piece of work for that director at that moment in their career. -- Edward Norton
I'm pretty busy in my life and I'm very aware of what it takes to direct a movie. It takes a lot out of you; it takes a lot out of the rest of your life, from other people in your life. I don't lie around hungering for that consumption very often. -- Edward Norton
I grow tired of intelligence having such a limited manifestation in movies - "intelligence" usually meaning coastal, with a certain level of formal education. -- Edward Norton
At this point in my life I'm not bent on proving anything, really. -- Edward Norton
Unpopular speech is absolutely vital to the health of our nation. -- Edward Norton
I think there is a serious corruption in the idea sold through advertising that you can attain spiritual peace through lifestyle and the notion of building your happiness from the outside-in by acquiring things ... which if you think about it, is the essence of advertising -- Edward Norton
There's a lot of romanticisation of the intuitive actor and method acting and all kinds of notions about getting inside a character and coming out from there. -- Edward Norton
I don't get much out of doing a red carpet. -- Edward Norton
I get heartbroken flying into L.A. It's just this feeling of unspecific loss. Can you imagine what the San Fernando Valley was when it was all wheat fields? Can you imagine what John Steinbeck saw? -- Edward Norton
I'm not particularly precious about the theatrical experience any more. -- Edward Norton
You never make all things for all people and can't always pander to the broadest denominator. I keep an eye toward doing the themes that interest me. Do they move me? Interest me? Make me think? When I run across something that is provocative in an unsettling way, it appeals to me. -- Edward Norton
Any questions I had about whether a redneck from Oklahoma could become a Brown Classical Philosophy professor ended when I met Tim [Blake Nelson]. -- Edward Norton
Fame is very corrosive and you have to guard very strictly against it. -- Edward Norton
Making really great music, making really great films, writing great books is an antidote to all of that. And, as people, as artists, some of the massive disruption that technology is causing is so exciting, the way that people can share creativity now. -- Edward Norton
People are worried about the degree to which corporate interest is starting to threaten human interest. -- Edward Norton
The deeper you go with the character, the more you see the layers start to peel away. It's more challenging to me, but it's also just interesting. Those are the things I like to watch. I like to watch the evolutions of something. -- Edward Norton
When the tides of life turn against you
And the current upsets your boat,
Don't waste those tears on what might have been,
Just lie on your back and float. -- Edward Norton
I remember as a kid having the offer of a scholarship, that it was going to be like going to Mars, and deciding to stay in my public school. -- Edward Norton
Most of what I know about environmental conservation I learned from my father, who has been a leader within the movement for over 30 years. -- Edward Norton
I've always thought of acting as more of an exercise in empathy, which is not to be confused with sympathy. You're trying to get inside a certain emotional reality or motivational reality and try to figure out what that's about so you can represent it. -- Edward Norton
Most of the films that I've ever really responded to are ones that I feel were really involved in their times. -- Edward Norton
I studied French forever, and when do I ever speak French? I clearly should have studied Spanish. I wish I had stuck with music, because that would still be great. I really wish I had learned to surf earlier in my life. -- Edward Norton
I always felt that acting was an escape, like having the secret key to every door and permission to go into any realm and soak it up. I enjoy that free pass. -- Edward Norton
I'm not a very methodologically pure actor. Almost every time that I start, I feel completely at sea. Always at the beginning I feel like a fraud, really, because I'm never sure how to get started. -- Edward Norton
I've always liked the idea of taking old dramatic ideas and devices and making them feel relevant or contemporary or whatever. -- Edward Norton
You know when somebody really knows what they're drawing from and you can feel it when you see the movie. -- Edward Norton
Screenplays aren't written to be read, they're written to be made into movies. -- Edward Norton
I like it when the deeper you go with the character, the more you see the layers start to peel away. -- Edward Norton
I never think that a film should answer questions for you. I think it should make you ask a lot of questions. -- Edward Norton
Obviously plastics have served very important purposes and been incredibly convenient but as we begin to witness the long-term consequences of the chemical components leaching into our water and our bodies, we're going to be forced to look for alternatives to how we package goods and food. -- Edward Norton
A lot of why I do something is just the novelty of the experience. -- Edward Norton
You can do things in twin scenes now you couldn't before. You can implement actual moving cameras. -- Edward Norton
When I think about directing a film, the thing that stops me short is wondering if I'm a natural at it the way I think you, and PTA, and Fincher are born directors. Maybe some people's talent is in understanding the ways that film communicates, without dialogue, without plot. -- Edward Norton
People say you can't make movies about your politics or the environment. And, generally speaking, I completely divide those sides of my brain. -- Edward Norton
I think technology is having a democratising effect on film. -- Edward Norton
I read a lot of scripts and so many are clearly a knockoff of one familiar genre or another. -- Edward Norton
I start to get fixated on a story and a character and an idea, and at a certain point, I really want to do it. It's a compulsion to explore a specific thing, as opposed to a compulsion to direct, generally speaking. -- Edward Norton
I don't have anything to prove to anybody, which is a lovely place to be. -- Edward Norton
The incentive for business is not, and cannot, be anything other than the root incentive for all business: they must profit. -- Edward Norton
All people are paradoxical. No one is easily reducible, so I like characters who have contradictory impulses or shades of ambiguity. It's fun, and it's fun because it's hard. -- Edward Norton
Young people know how to use these social networking tools, and they know how to use them effectively. -- Edward Norton
When people come together too young, they try to become one person. As you get older, you realize that you don't want to become one person because then you lose the person you are. -- Edward Norton
Most of the movies that I've made that I really felt good about and cared about made very little money anyway, so I'm not particularly worried about people downloading and sharing them. -- Edward Norton
In drama, I think, the audience is a willing participant. It's suspending a certain kind of disbelief to try to get something out of a story. -- Edward Norton
Sometimes their oppression of emotion and the weird way it comes out is more interesting than painting it in bold primary colors. -- Edward Norton
People wrestle sometimes making movies, and I think that conflict is a very essential thing. I think a lot of very happy productions have produced a lot of very banal movies. -- Edward Norton
I'm a New Yorker, you know. -- Edward Norton
Suspension of disbelief and that whole question is part of the heart of the 'Leaves of Grass'movie. -- Edward Norton
Practiced poorly, tourism can be extremely negative. -- Edward Norton
My generation is having its midlife crisis in its 20s. -- Edward Norton
It's a dream to be in a company of actors. -- Edward Norton
If you've got a piece and you can feel the person who's going to direct it is really made for it, if it's really special for them, then it's going to be a better-than-usual experience. -- Edward Norton
If two people are at completely different stages in their spiritual life, that can present a real problem. -- Edward Norton
The people who work in the scientific field, they need help to convey what it's about. -- Edward Norton
I just love movies. -- Edward Norton
I wish I were more musically gifted, more intuitive in playing instruments. -- Edward Norton
It's ginned up by the corporate plutocracy as a way of distracting the working-class people that it's screwing. We hamstring our own natural progressivism in this country, and that's really stupid. -- Edward Norton
I have this embedded faith in the process through which films of a certain type get discovered on longer timelines. -- Edward Norton
I grew up on the golden age of children's TV. -- Edward Norton
You always end up getting involved in things because of, you know, the strange things your life brings you into contact with. -- Edward Norton
You can't control everything that comes to you. -- Edward Norton
I hear about actors being exterior actors and actors being instinctual actors and I always think it's crap. Anybody who knows anything about it knows that good actors do both - they do inside-outward and they do outside-inward. You can't not do both. -- Edward Norton
It's better for people to miss you than to have seen too much of you. -- Edward Norton
As we say in the sewer, if you're not prepared to go all the way, don't put your boots on in the first place. -- Edward Norton
The period western doesn't have a lot to say to most people today. -- Edward Norton
The more you do your homework, the more you're free to be intuitive. But you've got to put the work in. -- Edward Norton
Sometimes we don't see certain things until we're ready to see them in a certain way. -- Edward Norton
No, I'm not a very methodologically pure actor. -- Edward Norton
Every little thing that people know about you as a person impedes your ability to achieve that kind of terrific suspension of disbelief that happens when an audience goes with an actor and character he's playing. -- Edward Norton
When I'm the one who sits down and looks at the blank page and writes it out all the way, then I'll call it my script. -- Edward Norton
Everyone keeps saying the western's dead, but it's not. -- Edward Norton
I just like working with smart people. -- Edward Norton
The more you can create that magic bubble, that suspension of disbelief, for a while, the better. -- Edward Norton