1. I got a part as a chorus girl in a show called Every Sailor and I had fun doing it. Mother didn't really approve of it, through. 2. Perhaps people, and kids especially, are spoiled today, because all the kids today have cars, it seems. When I was young you were lucky to have a bike.
3. You know, the period of World War I and the Roaring Twenties were really just about the same as today. You worked, and you made a living if you could, and you tired to make the best of things. For an actor or a dancer, it was no different then than today. It was a struggle.
4. You dirty, double-crossing rat.
5. My father was totally Irish, and so I went to Ireland once. I found it to be very much like New York, for it was a beautiful country, and both the women and men were good-looking.
6. I never actually said: "Nnng-you dirty ra-at!" What I actually said was (imitating Cary Grant): "Judy! Judy! Judy!" (about his most famous misquoted line:)
7. Learn your lines, find your mark, look 'em in the eye and tell 'em the truth.
8. They need you. Without you, they have an empty screen. So, when you get on there, just do what you think is right and stick with it.
9. There's not much to say about acting but this. Never settle back on your heels. Never relax. If you relax, the audience relaxes. And always mean everything you say.
10. Once a song and dance man, always a song and dance man. Those few words tell as much about me professionally as there is to tell.
11. I'm sick of carrying guns and beating up women. (1931)
13. If the American family has seemed in danger of disintegration, I believe and hope it will survive, and I think America will return to old values.
14. All I try to do is to realize the man I'm playing fully, then put as much into my acting as I know how. To do it, I draw upon all that I've ever known, heard, seen or remember.
15. With me, a career was the simple matter of putting groceries on the table.
16. Where I come from, if there's a buck to be made, you don't ask questions, you go ahead and make it.
18. The 1920s were essentially the time when I learned the business of performing. It was my initiation into the world of show business.
19. My biggest concern is that doing a rough-and-tumble scene I might hurt someone accidentally.
21. Though I soon became typecast in Hollywood as a gangster and hoodlum, I was originally a dancer, an Irish hoofer, trained in vaudeville tap dance. I always leapt at the opportunity to dance in films later on.
22. One thing that troubles me is that they say that my portrayals of gangsters and hoodlums led to a tolerance of the criminal element by society. Well, I certainly hope they didn't, because I'm firmly opposed to crime.
23. It was just everyday living. With me, it was fighting, more fighting, and more fighting. Life then was simply the way it was: ordinary, not bad, not good, just regular. No stress, no strain. Of course, no one had much of anything, but we didn't know that we were poor.
25. When I was younger, if someone had told me I had only two years to live, I'd have gone to an island that was really country - and just rocked it out by myself. But if someone told me the same thing today, I believe I'd probably travel - just to get away from all the noise and nonsense we are surrounded with.
26. The things the world most needs are simplicity, honesty and decency - and you find them more often in the country than in the city. My feeling for the country goes beyond sense. I don't like to be in the cities at all. I like to be where animals are - and thing growing.
What do you think of James Cagney quotes?
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