Famous quotes by Robert de Niro:

"The characters that I play are real. They are real so they have as much right to be portrayed as any other characters."

"When you make a drama, you spend all day beating a guy to death with a hammer, or what have you. Or, you have to take a bite out of somebody's face. On the other hand, with a comedy, you yell at Billy Crystal for an hour, and you go home."

"I don't like to watch my own movies - I fall asleep in my own movies."

"I think Hollywood has a class system. The actors are like the inmates, but the truth is they're running the asylum."

"There is a certain combination of anarchy and discipline in the way I work."

"I go to Paris, I go to London, I go to Rome, and I always say, 'There's no place like New York. It's the most exciting city in the world now. That's the way it is. That's it.'"

"There's nothing more ironic or contradictory than life itself."

"It's important not to indicate. People don't try to show their feelings, they try to hide them."

"You'll have time to rest when you're dead."

"You learned the two greatest thing in life, never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut."

"You draw on whatever's relevant to the part you're playing; it makes it more personal."

"I mean, the actors that I admired were Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, an actress named Barbara Harris. And Greta Garbo. They were great actors."

"One of the things about acting is it allows you to live other people's lives without having to pay the price."

"Italy has changed. But Rome is Rome."

"When I was 15, 16, I studied with Stella Adler at the Conservatory of Acting, then I stopped again and went to the Actors Studio when I was 18."

"If it's a very emotional scene, you're kind of relieved when you've done it, kind of spent. And there are times when you can be rattled, certain characters if they're hyper, that can carry over, the residue of that. But I try to leave it on the set."