A biography for Peter O'Toolehasn’t been written yet.
“Films were never in my budget. Didn't occur to me till much later. I hoped for a long, good life, which I've had and I'm having as an actor. I didn't expect the rest.”
“It's a razor's edge, a romance with an old man and a young woman.”
“Money is always a pressure.”
“It's very inconvenient because every time I finish, let's say, a chapter of a book, I think I'm going to ring Richard and then realize: Oh, Christ, I've buried him. I buried him last year.”
“I can't stand light. I hate weather. My idea of heaven is moving from one smoke-filled room to another.”
“I quite like being old.”
“Irish women are always carrying water on their heads, and always carrying their husbands home from pubs. Such things are the greatest posture-builders in the world.”
“I can make the best French toast.”
“No one ever watched competitive swimming.”
“It is time for me to chuck in the sponge. To retire from films and stage. The heart for it has gone out of me: it won't come back.”
“Pope Paul III was the greatest thief in the history of the church.”
“There's always a hunger, when you're young, to go from peak to peak and avoid the valleys.”
“I'm Irish. That means I'm Catholic. But, truth is, now I'm a retired Christian.”
“My professional acting life, stage and screen, has brought me public support, emotional fulfillment and material comfort. It has brought me together with fine people, good companions with whom I've shared the inevitable lot of all actors: flops and hits.”
“The only thing I've ever been interested in teaching anyone in life is cricket.”
“I've done everything that's possible to be done.”
“You know when you've found a part that you want to play. You know it because the part takes you over. It sits in the script waiting for you to play him.”
“If I'm not at my study by 10:00, 10:30, forget it, I can't write a word.”
“A few years back I was asked if I would go and meet a director and his various acolytes, and it occurred to me halfway through the meeting that what I was doing was auditioning. And I thought, 'Well, hang on buddy. I've done half a century of this.'”
“We were doing it under the most extraordinary circumstances, but the first out of the tent in the morning would be David Lean. He said to me on the very first day of shooting, Pete, this is the beginning of a great adventure.”