A biography for Harry Dean Stantonhasn’t been written yet.
“I was trained on the stage, and I can do stage as well as I can do movies, but I prefer films.”
“I've worked with some of the best of them. Not just directors like Sam Peckinpah and David Lynch, but writers like Sam Shepard and singers like Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson.”
“People kept asking me, 'When are you singing again?' so I kept doing it. It was that simple.”
“You want people walking away from the conversation with some kernel of wisdom or some kind of impact.”
“Molly Ringwald, she's a natural talent. Every girl in this country related to that girl.”
“I think I'm blessed with a pretty tough psyche.”
“I just wasn't psychologically made to get married or, God forbid, be a father.”
“I can understand why it takes some people a long time to really be a singer. You have to find out, 'Why am I singing? What am I doing this for?' I do it because I enjoy it, and philosophically, music is a catalyst. It's a refining agent.”
“I worked with the best directors - Martin Scorsese, John Huston, David Lynch, Alfred Hitchcock. Alfred Hitchcock was great.”
“I've never been ambitious about recording.”
“The most terrifying thing for most everybody in the whole Western World is to take responsibility for your own life and to experience real freedom.”
“I play myself all the time, on camera and off. What else can I do?”
“I was in the Pacific. The Pacific Theater, as they say.”
“'Alien?' Oh, yeah. I still get fanmail almost every week, pictures from all over the world on that movie. That's one of the most popular films I've done.”
“I think any performing artist can do films, or, as a matter of fact, anybody out there in the street can be a film actor with no experience whatsoever if you've got a good director.”
“I think every actor wants to play those big parts. In the very first play I ever did, I remember understanding all the characters in it. I always felt I could play anyone.”
“The first film I ever remember - I think my mother took me to it - was called 'She Married Her Boss' with Melvyn Douglas.”
“I've got a pretty iconoclastic attitude about all institutions myself. And I just think the church was corrupted right after Christ was killed.”
“For a musician to be good, he has to have humanity and care about the other guy. And as for blues - in a sense, black people have kept this country alive and given us our entire musical heritage.”
“California is full of Mexican culture and Mexican music.”