Quotes by Mike Nichols

About Mike Nichols:

Mike Nichols was a German-born American film and theatre director, producer, actor and comedian. He began his career in the 1950s with the improv troupe The Compass Players, predecessor of the Second City in Chicago, and as one half of the comedy duo Nichols and May, along with Elaine May. May was also in the Compass. In 1968 he won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film The Graduate. His other films include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Catch-22, Carnal Knowledge, Silkwood, Working Girl, The Birdcage, Closer, Charlie Wilson's War (his final picture), and the TV mini-series Angels in America. He also staged the original theatrical productions of The Apple Tree, Barefoot in the Park, Luv, The Odd Couple and Spamalot.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Oh my God, if I know anything, I know I'm gonna die! I never forget that. I know I'll be forgotten in a minute, and that's just fine with me.

Mike Nichols

There are absolutely almost perfect people who experience no guilt; they don't know what it is. They simply do what they need to do - or want to do - next. They see nothing wrong with it. They feel no guilt. They express no guilt. And it's not even c...

Mike Nichols

That seems to me the great American danger we're all in, that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it.

Mike Nichols

American society to me and my brother was thrilling because, first of all, the food made noise. We were so excited about Rice Krispies and Coca-Cola. We had only silent food in our country, and we loved listening to our lunch and breakfast.

Mike Nichols

As a little kid in a sometimes hard place, I went to the movies as often as I could. Movies - making them, seeing them - is not something that could ever lose its pleasure for me. That puts them on a short list of things that eternally give me joy - ...

Mike Nichols

The only safe thing is to take a chance.

Mike Nichols

Things come in waves, and I'm always more interested in places like, for instance, Chicago, where people don't follow fashion. They're not galloping past your window on the way to the latest anything. They're living their lives. You do a play, they c...

Mike Nichols

I think the main thing about comedy and humor is that it's impossible and always was impossible to define.

Mike Nichols

I'm in the theater because of two plays: 'A Streetcar Named Desire' and 'Death of a Salesman.'

Mike Nichols

All the theories that acting is reacting to imaginary circumstances as though they are real, and directing is turning psychology into behavior, those are all stabs at something that can't be taught. All the great actors can't talk about what they do,...

Mike Nichols

Most great plays of the past lose their grip on immediacy; on application to our lives right now.

Mike Nichols

Plays, especially great plays, yield their secrets over a long period of time. You can't read it three times and say, 'OK, I got it. I know what's happening.'

Mike Nichols

Any good movie is filled with secrets.

Mike Nichols

I still think that luck is what a lot of the good things come from. It's simply the luck of where you are, when.

Mike Nichols

It took me forever, learning improvisation, because I had studied with Lee Strasberg - I dropped out of Chicago and went to his classes in New York for a couple of years, once or twice a week. What I didn't realize was I was learning directing becaus...

Mike Nichols

Fear of comedy is all so much about who you do it with.

Mike Nichols

I never understand when people say, 'Do you do comedy or tragedy?' I don't think they're very much different. They both have to be true, and there isn't a great play in the world that doesn't have funny parts to it - as 'Salesman' does, as 'King Lear...

Mike Nichols

The whole point about laughter is it's like mercury: you can't catch it, you can't catch what motivates it - that's why it's funny.

Mike Nichols

The things that you saw earlier in your life generally have more power than the things you saw last week.

Mike Nichols

The greatest thrill is that moment when a thousand people are sitting in the dark, looking at the same scene, and they are all apprehending something that has not been spoken. That's the thrill of it, the miracle - that's what holds us to movies fore...

Mike Nichols

You could say that it's in talking movies that inner life begins to appear. You can see things happen to the faces of people that were neither planned nor rehearsed.

Mike Nichols

Author Bio

  • NameMike Nichols
  • DescriptionGerman-American television, director, writer, producer and comedian
  • AliasesMikhail Igorevich Peschkowsky
  • BornNovember 6, 1931
  • DiedNovember 19, 2014
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionFilm Director; Screenwriter; Film Producer; Actor
  • AwardsAcademy Award For Best Director; National Medal Of Arts; Primetime Emmy Award; Directors Guild Of America Award