Alan Alda

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.

Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative place where no one else has ever been.

You can't get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you're doing. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself.

I'm an angry person, angrier than most people would imagine, I get flashes of anger. What works for me is working out when it's useful to use that anger.

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is really advice to myself, a reminder to myself not to avoid change or uncertainty, but to go with it, to surf into change.

There is a wonderful feeling of power when you're a director, but I don't think I need that, and I'm OK without it.

I used to not want to die in any way but in my sleep when I was a young man. I'd like to die awake now, if possible, with people around me who love me.

It's really clear to me that you can't hang onto something longer than its time. Ideas lose certain freshness, ideas have a shelf life, and sometimes they have to be replaced by other ideas.

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself.

I would like to know that when I read the paper in the morning, it's telling me something that actually happened, and I think the vast majority of journalists want the same thing.

I was a child, and my mother was psychotic. She loved me, but I didn't really feel I had a mother. And when you live with somebody who is paranoid and thinks you're trying to kill them all the time, you tend to feel a little betrayed.

I'm most at home on the stage.

We're highly social animals - I'm told by scientists that what makes us different from other animals is an acute social awareness, which is what has made us so successful.

No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle and good, without the world being better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness.

When people are laughing, they're generally not killing one another.

And I think belief is one of those things that comes to people in their own way. And just because I believe in something doesn't mean I think that you should.

The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What youll discover will be wonderful. What youll discover is yourself.

You know what my earliest memories are? Going from one burlesque town to another. My father was in burlesque.

Achingly funny as it was, Larry Gelbart's writing gave off sparks that turned a hard light on the way we are.

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What youll discover will be wonderful. What youll discover is yourself.

I have a strong preference for being alive.

If scientists can't communicate with the public, with policy makers, with one another, the future is going to be held back. We're not going to have the future that we could have.

At times you have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you ll discover will be wonderful. What you ll discover is yourself.

When I was about ten years old, I gave my teacher an April Fool's sandwich, which had a dead goldfish in it.

Kids are natural scientists.

What heartens me is to see '30 Rock' on the air. It makes me laugh from my gut, which I really like to do.

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can't get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you're doing, but what you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself.

The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.

'Never Have Your Dog Stuffed' is really advice to myself, a reminder to myself not to avoid change or uncertainty, but to go with it, to surf into change.

I think most people are interested in our origins; once we understand, it might be easier to become the people we'd like to be. Or, better, become the people we think we already are.

Almost everybody that's well-known gets tagged with a nickname.

It's too bad I'm not as wonderful a person as people say I am, because the world could use a few people like that.

You can't be aware of everything. You'd fall down the stairs if you were aware of every intricate thing involved in going down stairs.

I find myself going to places where I really have no business, speaking to these people in a whole other field that I have no extensive knowledge of. But I do it very often because it scares me.

My mother didn't try to stab my father until I was six, but she must have shown signs of oddness before that.

I wouldn't live in California. All that sun makes you sterile.

It's a funny feeling to work with people who you consider your colleagues and to realize that they actually are young enough to be your children.

Here's my Golden Rule for a tarnished age: Be fair with others, but keep after them until they're fair with you.

Anyone I know who's almost died has come out of it, at least for a while, looking at things differently.

I was always interested in figuring things out. I'd do experiments, like combining things I found around the house to see what would happen if I put them together.

I've never tried to manipulate my image.

I made my first stage appearance when I was 6 months old.

To do a musical takes a tremendous amount of energy because you have to act and sing at the same time. And everything has to be precise. Because you can't forget the lyrics because the band keeps playing, you know, and you're under a certain amount of pressure.

What I can't completely understand is most other people's fascination with what the famous among us do with their lips and the rest of their bodies. Why do ordinary people become the target of this curiosity simply by virtue of the fact that other people recognise their names and faces but know almost nothing else about them?

I found I wasn't asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something. I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn't know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen.

You can't get there by bus, only by hard work, risking, and by not quite knowing what you're doing. What you'll discover will be wonderful: yourself.

I always loved Sid Caesar and all the people on his program.

The hardest thing for me about making movies, and that included 'M*A*S*H' because it was made like a movie, was starting and stopping.

I really don't like plays or movies that service propaganda.

Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.

The meaning of life is life.

Life is meaningless unless you bring meaning to it. It is up to us to create our own existence. Unless you do something, unless you make something it's as though you aren't there.

No matter how big the audience is going to be. I'm interested in doing things that are fun.

For me, I find that even though I've accomplished a few things in my life, looking back on accomplishments doesn't give me a sense of satisfaction.

At times you have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What youll discover will be wonderful. What youll discover is yourself.

When I was in high school, I fell under the spell of that crazy idea that if you're interested in the arts, you can't be interested in science.

You wouldn't want to be called a sell-out by selling a product. Selling out was frowned on, whereas now you can major in it at business school.

In 2003, I almost died of an intestinal blockage when I was on a mountain in Chile, filming a segment for 'Scientific American Frontiers.'

What I always wanted to get seen as was as a good actor, when it was the acting I was doing. When I'm writing, I want to try to be seen as a good writer.

It isn't necessary to be rich and famous to be happy. It's only necessary to be rich.

Awards can give you a tremendous amount of encouragement to keep getting better, no matter how young or old you are.

If I can't get the girl, at least give me more money.

When people are laughing, they're generally not killing each other.

Awards shows mainly publicize the people giving the awards.

Originality is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe - you can't take a taxi.

As an artist, as an actor, as a writer, you have to use what's personal to you. You have to be personal about your work; otherwise, it doesn't ring true.

I love oatmeal. To me, it's not boring. I agree that ordinary oatmeal is very boring, but not the steel-cut Irish kind - the kind that pops in your mouth when you bite into it in little glorious bursts like a sort of gummy champagne.

What's funny is that you can think you really value your life until you almost lose it.

Marie Curie is my hero. Few people have accomplished something so rare - changing science. And as hard as that is, she had to do it against the tide of the culture at the time - the prejudice against her as a foreigner, because she was born in Poland and worked in France. And the prejudice against her as a woman.

I know there's a creative side to artists to - pardon me - there's a creative side to scientists already, but there may be an artistic side, too, waiting to break free.

All I've ever tried to do is play real people.

Listening is being able to be changed by the other person.

Some of the greatest things, as I understand, they have come about by serendipity, the greatest discoveries.

I think it's important for scientists to speak in their own voices and not just be mediated by journalists or others speaking for them.

I've sat looking down into a volcano that could blow at any moment; I've helped catch a shark and several rattlesnakes; I let a tarantula walk across my hand, and I ate rat soup.

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself.

I had never really wanted to be famous. Everyone is supposed to want to be rich and famous, but as a boy I never knew what rich was, and the first view I had of famous made me leery.

It makes it fun. When an actor plays a character, you want what that character wants. Otherwise it doesn't look authentic. So I really want to defeat Jimmy - I mean Jimmy as the character.

When I am at a dinner table, I love to ask everybody, 'How long do you think our species might last?' I've read that the average age of a species, of any species, is about two million years. Is it possible we can have an average life span as a species? And do you picture us two million years more or a million and a half years, or 5,000?

M*A*S*H' was a collection of people, in front of and behind the cameras, that really clicked.

Any play is hard to write, and plays are getting harder and harder to get on the stage.

I'm condemned by some inner compulsion to think about the daily rituals of my life. I have a low grade fever for improving myself in many ways, including everyday tasks.

Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don't leave any of yourself safely on shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.

I read science, because to me, that's extremely exciting. It's like a great detective story, and it's happening right in front of us.

The President never intends to get into any kind of war situation. He gets carried away by events.

I'm in the real world, some people try to steal from me, and I stop them, frequently, take them to court. I love a good lawsuit. It's fun.

Really top-notch directors, I've often worked with them just to see how they work.

Be fair with others, but then keep after them until they're fair with you.

Usually, comedy shows only influence other comedy shows. 'M*A*S*H' is one of the few comedies that influenced dramatic shows as well.

I love to watch how scientists' minds work.

I used to read science fiction a lot, and I still like science fiction when it is a model of how we really are and to see ourselves from another perspective.

The one thing I think I've noticed about shows that are supposed to be funny on television is that they've sort of become routinized, so there's an awful lot of mannerisms and joke lines that are sort of there to trigger laughter, rather than give actors a chance to play a moment.

My father sang well, and he was a handsome man. When he walked down the street, people sometimes mistook him for Cary Grant and asked for his autograph.

What is beauty, anyway? It's more than something pleasant looking. If it doesn't stop us in our tracks and make us unable to move for a moment, unable to put into words what's closing off the breath in our throats, then maybe it's pretty, but it probably isn't beauty.

I don't watch that much TV, so I can't compare one show to another. When I watch television, I watch people talking to one another usually or a science show where they show me microbes, you know. Microbes actually communicate quite a bit, and so there's a lot of talking going on.

I've been nominated twice before as actor in a leading part. Now I'm nominated as actor in a supporting part. If I don't win, I'll just wait until I'm nominated for being in the theater during the show. Do they have one like that?

It's not an epitaph. I felt I could look back at my life and get a good story out of it. It's a picture of somebody trying to figure things out. I'm not trying to create some impression about myself. That doesn't interest me.

Whenever I think of how much pleasure I have interviewing scientists, I remember that they're having the real fun in actually being able to do the science.

Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in while, or the light won't come in.

I've been lucky enough to live through all the things that are supposed to give meaning to our lives, like parenting, grandparenting, art, celebrity. All these things you expect meaning to come from, and sometimes it comes when you're not expecting it.