We here at Counterforce have decided – and let’s face it, sometimes we just know better – that your life would be both drastically and dramatically different if today it included quotes from one of America’s most vital thespians and national treasures: Nic Cage.

“Passion is very important to me. If you stop enjoying things, you’ve got to look at it, because it can lead to all kinds of depressing scenarios.”

“There’s a fine line between the Method actor and the schizophrenic.”

from here.

“I am not a demon. I am a lizard, a shark, a heat-seeking panther. I want to be Bob Denver on acid playing the accordion.”

“One of the first signs of being depressed is that you lose interest in things. That`s why I think it is important to stay passionate.”

from Nic Cage As Everyone!

“Hollywood didn’t know if I was an actor or a nut or if I was this crazy character I was playing. I had developed an image of being a little bit unusual, different and wild.”

On how sometimes he goes way over the top and sometimes he holds back:

“Thank you for noticing, because first of all, it’s difficult to talk about the work, right? Because when you talk about the work, it’s kind of stupid because the work speaks for itself. I don’t want to name it, because when you name it, if you name it then it loses its mystery. If I tell you exactly what I was thinking, or what I was up to – and I have been guilty of that – then you lose your secret connection with the work of art. And I digress, but I went on Dick Cavett many years ago and met Miles Davis. And I was talking about things like art synthesis and Picasso and you can do with acting what he did, or with music, and Miles came out and he got it, you know, he was looking at me, he gave me this, like – he nodded and he winked at me. Miles Davis, you know. And we were sharing the trumpet. And ever since then, because he accepted whatever my philosophy was, I believe that I wanted to approach acting as jazz. And so he became like a surrealist father of sorts, along with Walt Disney. And I thought, ‘Okay. Well, this time, I’m going to just let anything come out, whatever it may be.’ Like Bad Lieutenant, you know. But sometimes, it’s really thought out and constructed and carefully thought out, like Adaptation. So I always like to mix it up.”

“As a teenager I was more of an anarchist, but now I want people to thrive and be more harmonious.”

On his marriage to Lisa Marie Presley:

“I`m sad about this, but we shouldn’t have been married in the first place.”

“I cry a lot. My emotions are very close to my surface. I don`t want to hold anything in so it festers and turns into pus – a pustule of emotion that explodes into a festering cesspool of depression.”

“Shock is still fun. I won’t ever shut the door on it.”

“[Pablo Picasso] said art is a lie that tells the truth. What if you just want to tell the truth and not lie about it?

“They say, ‘Evil prevails when good men fail to act.’ What they ought to say is, ‘Evil prevails.’”

-from one of his most underrated movies, Lord Of War.

“I remember when I met Johnny Depp, he was a guitar player from Florida, and he had no idea he could be an actor. I said, ‘I really think you are an actor, that you have that ability.’ That was just from playing one game of Monopoly with him. I sent him to my agent and he has gone on to carve out a successful career.”

“I think I jump around more when I`m alone.”

Referring to his family:

“It’s a family that’s loaded with grudges and passion. We come from a long line of robbers and highwaymen in Italy, you know. Killers, even.”

from, once again, Nic Cage As Everyone.

“To be a good actor you have to be something like a criminal, to be willing to break the rules to strive for something new.”