Edward G. Robinson Quotes

You can tell them that I live passionately. In fact, you may go further and say that unless a human being lives passionately, he may almost as well be dead. Now passion and sex are usually confused, but life without a passion for living is a pretty dull procedure. I have a passion for acting, for music, for art and, thank God, I have the opportunity to express myself in the first and to indulge myself in the other two.

Sandy Koufax, come home!

You know, I've always figured the waiting is what I get paid for. The acting I do free.

He may yet turn out to have greatness in him despite himself. I think his kind of ambition is indeed a grievous thing; now that he cannot be reelected, maybe he'll let his humanity emerge. There simply has to be more to the man than he lets us see.

I think it should be declared illegal. I don't think we should gamble on wheat futures.

He's the greatest bull artist in the world—and only occasionally the greatest artist in the world.

I was not alone. The atmosphere, after the joys of the armistice, was strange and foreboding for those of us who sought a world of peace and international comity. Woodrow Wilson had, as Martin Luther King had, a dream, and I shared that dream—all fourteen points of it—and watched it come to nothing. (I was in the press gallery of the House of Representatives when President Woodrow Wilson returned from Europe and addressed Congress. I saw Senator Henry Cabot Lodge avoiding him. I heard Wilson's muted passion, and I cried.) What a splendid vision the League of Nations was; how sickening to watch it scuttled.

I'm told he's no longer a hero and he could have done more for the Jews, that he had a mistress. Well, count up the score. He turned the twentieth century around; without him, I think we'd all be ruled by a commissariat.

The first symptom is that hair grows on your ears. It's very disconcerting.

The greatest actor of the century, and lucky he was out of politics before TV. Like William Jennings Bryan, he could never have read from cue cards.

I hated every minute of it and couldn't stop crying.

He belonged to more causes than I did. I think I had a letter from him every other day asking for money. I always responded.

No matter how big you get, check out all the props. Make certain they're where they're supposed to be. In The Racket, I was supposed to be gunned down. One night the poor actor shooting me had no blanks in his pistol, so I had no cue. Improvising out of pure desperation, I changed Bart Cormack's play and died of a heart attack. It was simulated, but it was almost real.

George M.,
In spite of the fact that this fight has taken on such profound dimensions my deep affection for you insists on keeping you a very central figure. Only the fact that I am deeply moved will excuse me from this note which I am writing with great respect. At the Equity meeting yesterday afternoon the thought occurred to me often, notwithstanding the thrill and fine feeling of the occasion itself, that it was not perfect without you, that I couldn't get the idea out of my mind that you would be happier if you were there. This occurs to me as so possible a course for you that from my modest position I am going to suggest it: that you do now, with the situation locked, forgive some things that have offended you and acknowledge—with the humility which will exalt the high position that your people, the actors, have so generously given you—that you yourself did temporarily lose your way. As I said in the beginning of this note, my deep affection for you will surely absolve me from an attempt to instruct you impertinently. I am honestly tying to serve you. Very hopefully yours,
Eddie

I think he means everything he says, but he says it so badly that he sounds like a ventriloquist's dummy. His ambition was also grievous.