- I stopped painting in 1990 at the peak of my success just to deny people my beautiful paintings. And I did it out of spite.
- I don't trust or love anyone. Because people are so creepy. Creepy creepy creeps. Creeping around. Creeping here and creeping there. Creeping everywhere. Crippity crappity creepies.
- I'm the happiest the saddest guy in the world can be.
- There's nothing self-gratifying about knowing you've played a performance where people may easily dislike the character and associate it with you. There's nothing fun about having people suspicious about why you're making work. I'm clearly not networking or making a bid for popularity. I'm following another motivation, and it's not as a provocateur. It's because I'm blinded, like an idiot, by wanting to preserve and express an insight that I have, or an aesthetic that I believe in. I forget that people react to me personally as the representative of that. Did you see a credit for hair and makeup? How can I be a narcissist? I've never even had hair and makeup done for me on a film. I don't even know what I look like as I'm filming. - on being called a narcissist.
- Early in elementary school I had a very small moment where I had a different face - a little nose, straight, blond hair. I had a lot of response, from older women and little girls. But at some point when I transformed into a less [attractive] person, I decided to push away my feelings, to protect myself in order to avoid rejection.
- I don't drink any coffee or take any drugs and I don't smoke cigarettes and I don't eat sugar and I don't take any medicine at all. I eat a lot of fish, vegetables, and I stay away from starches. I'm not so sure my eating behavior is responsible. I look like someone who takes drugs, so I refuse to take even aspirin in order to contradict my appearance. But I like the color brown. Oh, and I don't eat dairy. And I sure do like the color brown. And pink. Pink and brown. If I had to choose, pink would lose.
- I never wanted to be an actor. I never want to be an actor. I want to be a movie star. The whole idea of having to act is too gruesome. It's too ambitious for me.
- I told you, I'm an extremist. Even in art, if my work wasn't 50 times more interesting than me and my petty life, it would be useless.
- I'm not an artist, I'm a hustler. As a hustler I've done many things. You should really believe it when I tell you that, 'cause I'm not being sarcastic. I'm a total hustler. What that means is I've hustled to make a buck and I've hustled to change the world and I've hustled to take revenge - but it's always hustling. I've never had a career or a single goal. I've never been formally educated. To get things together, to make a living, I constantly have to hustle.
- I'm so in love with the United States. Not as a patriot. I'm in love with America like it's my first girlfriend. The geography, the people, the smell, the touch, the taste, the gas stations. I'm madly in love with America. Madly in love. And I was the guy that people used to say, "He's so European." I mean, I never felt like that. I don't relate to those monkeys. I just can't relate to them. I'm a super American--Captain America.
- "Well, if you want to be an actor, move to a major city, either in L.A. or N.Y. and every day do as many things as you possibly can to reach that goal. But make sure that goal is set so high, that if you reach one-tenth of the goal, you've gone a long ways. Fantasize and believe that you could star in a 100 Oscar-winning movies, and just work for that every day. Let's face it, most people want to be actors because they want unconditional love and power and money and to be able to act out a character fantasy that involves themselves. So if one is truly honest about themselves in that way, then you're on the right path. If not, the process becomes convoluted. You have to go out grab it, and demand it. That's my advice. " - His advice to struggling actors.
- I did my first job as an actor and my first role was in 1978 in Rome. I did a play with an Italian actor named Victor Cavallo who worked with Bernardo Bertolucci. After that I was very much a part of the New York performance art and underground theater and movie scene, so it's been quite awhile. But always very peripheral.
- The good thing about bicycling is that, since I'm a public figure, I don't have to interact with people. If I walk from here to West Broadway, 50 people will stop me. On my bike, I can just wave. More public figures should ride bikes. It's a good way to deal with people.
- My parents took an interest in nothing, at home no books, no records. My mother and my father are the emblem of indifference, dryness and bad taste. My father is also terribly stingy, in life as well as in feelings: I have never seen him filling up the bathtub. To save, he used to put the water 4 inches from the bottom. At home everything was ugly, casual, lacking in love, from furniture to clothes, to behaviors...
- I became an actor, because of Danny Bonaduce on the "Partridge Family". He's tremendous, so funny and brilliant, and we seemed around the same age, I felt I should be on a show with him. We could have done a good spin-off, "the Danny Bonaduce, Vinnie Gallo show", da-da-da-da- da di da da.
- I feel very happy that Bush is our president. One way that you can tell we have a good president, is by how much the French dislike him. The more the French hate him, the better he must be. And they hate this one.
- I sold The Brown Bunny camera package because I had organized it so methodically, so precisely, that I couldn't let anyone touch it, scratch it, or break it up. I just had to get it out of my life. The package was sold to Sage Stallone who's one of my favorite people in this whole world, one of the smartest, young, goofy kids I've ever known in my whole life. So it went to the right person
- I've never been a popular person, but it doesn't matter. I have everything in my life that I want. I'm not a walking publicity stunt. I'm not an anarchist, or bitter. I'm not trying to be subversive. I just try to remain unguarded, unprotected by fear, and agents and publicists, and I feel comfortable that way.
- [on Argentina]: This country sucks. If I drop a banana here, everyone kills for it.
- Sofia Coppola likes any guy who has what she wants. If she wants to be a photographer she'll fuck a photographer. If she wants to be a filmmaker, she'll fuck a filmmaker. She's a parasite just like her fat, pig father was.
- I wouldn't work for Martin Scorsese for $10 million. He hasn't made a good film in 25 years. I would never work with an egomaniac has-been.
- [on Spike Jonze] He's the biggest fraud out there. If you bring him to a party he's the least interesting person at the party, he's the person who doesn't know anything. He's the person who doesn't say anything funny, interesting, intelligent. He's a pig piece of shit.
- Drugs and alcohol cloud your mind. When you drink, you do things you wouldn't do as sober. And that's why most people drink... O.K., but it doesn't interest me.
- Steven Soderbergh sucks. He's just a guy who's sort of like...there's a whole group of guys who pretend to be making special fucking films who are just real players. Wes Anderson sucks. Spike Jonze sucks bad. James Gray sucks.
- [1998] One shouldn't subdivide a century into too small of a microcosm. If I have a record from 15 years ago, in the context of the evolution of mankind, that is not an old record.
- [2018] Thankfully, these days Donald Trump has at least created some doubts about everything related to the press. In 2003 I was the Donald Trump of Cannes and anything I said or did was twisted and filtered through the righteous tabloid barbarians posing as journalists and critics. Today, young people in the big cities in New York and California are all part of a similar social ideological consensus and all think alike. They are highly motivated in their ideological reasoning and are intolerant.
- [2018] Today's intolerant, young, liberal California/New Yorkers are only comfortable within their own shared consensus. Friends must think alike and believe the same things now. They must vote the same and defend the same ideology like zombies. Anyone who disagrees can only be evil, stupid, and wrong.
- I had a strong, special reaction to Christina Ricci the first moment I saw her on film. That reaction pushed me to want to make my own film so I could work with her. I still smile when I see a picture of her and when she insults me in the press it reminds me that we are connected in some way, and for that I am grateful. Christina Ricci was my friend during the filming of Buffalo '66 (1998) and working with her made sense and felt natural. I don't think she likes the finished film much. During the film's release she didn't do much to support it. Instead, she pushed another film of hers called The Opposite of Sex (1998).
- [September 2001] I was 26 years old before I knew what it was like to have an ordinary day. I was in Rome and I immediately came back to New York and went into therapy in the hope of repeating the experience.
- [2018] Today's liberal mainstreamers have tried hard to eliminate antagonism and instead have cultivated a weird friendliness toward cultural radicalism. Cultural radicalism has then become completely fashionable and it is now part of the status quo.
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