Quotes

By Sylvester Stallone

 

 

Ø     I’m not handsome in the classical sense. The eyes droop, the mouth is crooked, the teeth aren’t straight, the voice sounds like a mafioso pallbearer.    

 

Ø     I am a sensitive writer, actor and director. Talking business disgusts me. If you want to talk business, call my disgusting personal manager.

 

Ø     I believe there’s an inner power that makes winners or losers. And the winners are the ones who really listen to the truth of their hearts.

 

Ø     I have a lack of fear, whereas in the past the fear of failure was a powerful motivator. Anyway, I have great expectations for the future, but I just don’t know if I’m the monarch of all I survey.

 

Ø     I have great expectations for the future, because the past was highly overrated.

 

Ø     I have two lovely sons and some good memories, but I’ve had a rather tumultuous personal life. It hasn’t been dull; I’ve been the Hiroshima of love.

 

Ø     I love being verbal in films.

 

Ø     I never quite understood these actors - though I envy them sometimes - who can lie out for a year or two. I feel as though time is a real pressing issue, and I want to get as much work done in the time that I have left.

 

Ø     I respect a woman too much to marry her.

 

Ø     Like I said, I’ve got too much respect for women to marry them, but that doesn’t mean you can’t support them emotionally and financially.

 

Ø     I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat.

 

Ø     I tend to think of action movies as exuberant morality plays in which good triumphs over evil.

 

Ø     I think everyone has a certain kind of formula in their life. When you deviate from that formula, you’re going to fail big or you’re gonna win big.

 

Ø     I think that gravity sets into everything, including careers, but pendulums do swing and mountains do become valleys after a while… if you keep on walking.

 

Ø     I think that’s become passe, but if you can surround yourself with a kind of monument to yourself and your family - a statement - and you can afford it, then that’s a noble project.

 

Ø     I was very much into buying contemporary art, but I’ve just decided I want to get rid of it all. Not that it’s not great art, but all of a sudden my mood has changed, and I want to go back to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century masters.

 

Ø     I’m a patriot of the heart.

 

Ø     I’m more focused and have a greater sense of challenge, because I constantly feel the weight of time.

 

Ø     I’ve been involved in something which was chaotic and insane. All I can say now is that I am, and intend to stay, a single man.

 

Ø     I’ve kind of fashioned my life after a Slinky. Bend me in a million shapes, and eventually I’ll spring back to what I originally was.

 

Ø     If bad decorating was a hanging offense, there’d be bodies hanging from every tree!

 

Ø     It would be great to be able to pass on to someone all of the successes, the failures, and the knowledge that one has had. To help someone, avoid all the fire, pain and anxiety would be wonderful.

 

Ø     Most action is based on redemption and revenge, and that’s a formula. Moby Dick was formula. It’s how you get to the conclusion that makes it interesting.

 

Ø     Once is a man’s life, for one mortal moment, he must make a grab for immorality; if not, he has not lived.

 

Ø     Playing polo is like trying to play golf during an earthquake.

 

Ø     Rambo isn’t violent. I see Rambo as a philanthropist.

 

Ø     Success is usually the culmination of controlling failure.

 

Ø     Suddenly I’ve got an overwhelming desire to surround myself with the aura of classical and Romantic art.

 

Ø     That’s what Rocky is all about: pride, reputation, and not being another bum in the neighborhood.

 

Ø     What I’m trying to do now in my life - not just with the building, but with everything - is to construct things that will have enduring qualities, and won’t just be ephemeral flashes in the pan.

 

Ø     When I tried to branch out into comedy, I didn’t do very well at it, so I went back to doing what I do naturally well, or what the audience expects from me - action pictures.

 

Ø     When I was in junior high school, the teachers voted me the student most likely to end up in the electric chair.

 

Ø     When you’re on top and you lead the parade, everyone’s there throwing lilies and lilac water on your head. But when those parades have gone by and there’s a storm in your heart, there are very few people that are going to sit there and listen to you bemoan life.  

 

Ø     The only happy artist is a dead artist, because only then you can’t change. After I die, I’ll probably come back as a paintbrush.

 

Ø     Rocky Balboa’ is about everybody who feels they want to participate in the race of life, rather than be a bystander. You’re never too old to climb a mountain, if that’s your desire.

 

Ø     I’m very, very humbled by that. There’s a lot of competition out there.

 

Ø     The champion’s management says let’s do this for real, for charity. Rocky says no but decides to be true to himself even though he’s going to be berated by everyone. Just to compete, not to win.

 

Ø     I expect it (criticism). I would do the same thing. My wife is the most critical. She said, ‘This is ridiculous…’ But you have two choices - not to do it or do it.

 

Ø     Mike made a mistake making ‘Rocky’ and unleashing me to the public,

 

Ø     It’s going great — there’s a lot of heart in it,

 

Ø     Rocky is basically on his own — it’s very touching. People that were in the first one that you didn’t think much about are back, really minor characters are now major characters.

 

Ø     There was a reluctance to go forward until everyone felt there was a script that echoed the kind of sincerity and values the first one had, and had some poignancy like the first one had. 

 

Ø     There’s a computer fight between the reigning world champion and Balboa, and Balboa wins.

 

Ø     Real love is when you become selfless and you are more concerned about your mate’s or children’s egos than your own. You’re now a giver instead of a taker.”

 

Ø     I thought I had reached a point in life where everything would be smooth. But it is not. It just gets more jagged and pitted and filled with turns that take you into the dark recesses of your mind. It never seems to get easy.

 

Ø     If you’re gonna be a failure, at least be one at something you enjoy.

 

Ø     I am not the smartest or most talented person in the world, but I succeeded because I keep going, and going, and going.