- Marlon Brando, Himself: Everything that you do - make it real as you can. Make it alive. Make it tangible. Find the truth of that moment.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: Lying for a living. That's what acting is. All I've done is just learned how to be aware of the process.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: And the reason they don't have light in the theater is because you are there with your fantasy. The person up on the screen is doing all the things that you want to do. They're kissing a woman you want to kiss. Hitting the people you want to hit. Being brave in a way you want to be brave.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: A good con man can fool anybody. And the first person that you fool, as a con man, is yourself.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: Acting is just making stuff up. But, that's okay. Life is a rehearsal. Life is an improvisation.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: With the wind blowing the light. The shadow of leaves. It is like a wonderful, soft dream. And that soft wind calling. That's a wind that you can trust. You are the memories.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: We develop the technique of acting, very, very early. Even from the time we're a kid, where we're throwing our oatmeal on the floor, just to get attention from our mothers. Acting is survival.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: We'd be able to have money. I never had any money. My father was a traveling salesman. I was making more in six months of work than he made in ten years. He measured everything by money. He couldn't understand how this ne'er-do-well son of his could possibly do that.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: The astounding thing, that most people don't realize, all motion pictures today, all acting today, stems from Stella Adler.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: There are times, I know I did much better acting than in that scene "On The Waterfront." It had nothing to do with me. The audience does the work. They are doing the acting. Everybody feels like they're a failure. Everybody feels they could have been a contender.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: I had a lot of loneliness. I spent most of my time, up in the library reading the National Geographic Magazine about Tahiti. I was entranced by the expressions on their faces. They had unmanaged faces. No manicured expressions. A kindness. That's where I want to go. That's where I want to be.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: If you took some kid and you put him up in Tahiti, he's a completely different kid. He wouldn't have this cruel, mean society killing him every day, kiliing the life out of him. All these kids of mine are filled with love from Tahiti.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: The greatest fear an actor has, is fear. How are you gonna be judged? I don't want to be caught trying. I don't want to be caught being afraid - that my story, my pretending, my lie, is gonna be disbelieved. That's gonna steal your performance away.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: [Referring to his role in "The Godfather"] We have this antiquated belief in the myths of goodness and evil. I don't believe in either one of those. But, I thought it would be interesting to play a gangster, not from the point of view that he was the bad guy, but if he was very gentle, a hero.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: Now let your mind drift. Back. Way back in time. To a time when you were very young. When you used to wake up in the morning. Put on your clothes, while everyone was sleeping. Walk down the sidewalk in - Omaha - and sit underneath that big elm tree.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: I was always interested to guess the things that people did not know about themselves.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: I have a great feeling of inadequacy. That I didn't know enough. That I didn't have enough education. That I felt - dumb.
- Marlon Brando: If I had a scene to play and I have to be angry, there must be within you - trigger mechanisms that are spring loaded - that are filled with contempt about something. I remember my father hitting my mother, I am fourteen.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: Damn, damn, damn, damn. When it's right, it's right! You can feel it in your bones. Then you feel whole. Then you feel good.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: There's something absurd about it. That people go with hard earned cash into a darkened room, where they sit and they look at a crystaline screen, upon which images move around and speak.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: When what you are as a child is unwanted. It's unwelcome. And you look for an identity that will be acceptable. Though, I had a wide variety of performances in me.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: There are no artists. We are businessmen. We're merchants. And there is no art.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: Maybe you're desperate for love. Always have been in your life. But, you've been distrustful of people. Is there anything about them that scares us, that's dangerous, that's gonna hurt us? 'Cause a lot of people are frightened to death of love.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: Many times I remember being down in the dumps and then I saw a movie that took me away for a few hours and I was completely restored. And I realized, oddly enough, that actors make a contribution to people's lives. Giving us a gift that you can't buy. Something that they can imbue with power and beauty and magnificence. Something beyond themselves. And we do need that.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: A fella told me that if you come to the theater and you feel 100%, show 80: and you come and you feel 60%, show 40; if you come to the theater and you only feel 40%, its best to turnaround and go home.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: I wanted very much to be involved in the motion pictures, so I could change it and do something nearer the truth. And I was convinced I could do that.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: As a kid when I used to sell bottles and cut lawns to get my ten cents to go to the movies and I would escape everything.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: I very often am struck with the illusion of success. Sometimes its difficult when you meet people because you see that they've pre-judged you - not to be treated normally. To have people staring at you, like an animal in the zoo or some strange creature from a distant land.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: "Mutiny on the Bounty" was perhaps my very worst experience in making a motion picture. I never want to do that kind of picture again, as long as I live.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: There's an old adage in Hollywood, it says if you have a message, go to Western Union.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: It's all bullsh*t. Money. Money. Money. If you think its about something else, you're going to be bruised.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: I'm going to do as much as I can. I'm going to start right now. To inform white people of what they don't know. The white man can't cool it when he's never dug it. And I'm here to try to dig it.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: I'm standing up, not for the black man, I'm standing up for the human race. All men are created equal.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: This is life and death. This is really life. We're talking about human relations. We're talking about human rights, racial issues, and, that's why I care.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: I'm interested in making enough money, so that I can say, "F*ck you to money. That's all."
- Marlon Brando, Himself: I used to think I'd never grow up. I thought that life would go on forever. And then I worried somewhat in the middle years, life is going away and I haven't done this, I haven't done that. I've denied that experience. I've denied myself that experience.
- Marlon Brando, Himself: Francis Coppola wanted me for the part in "The Godfather." But, the studio was fighting it. It was demeaning to do a, eh, screen test; but, I needed a part at that time. I wasn't sure I could play that part either. I got some cotton and I put some here - a little bit of cotton down there. And, eh, the first thing you know, I'm talkin' like this, like I took a shot in the throat or something. I don't know. I mumbled my way through it.