Alan Arkin Quotes

Fluidity and discontinuity are central to the reality in which we live.

I don't like any category; categories are not my favorite subject. They're too confining.

I believe things when it comes out 'cause I know how it is - things change all the time.

People try to contain things by putting them into categories. I don't.

The line that describes the beautiful is elliptical. It has simplicity and constant change. It cannot be described by a compass, and it changes direction at every one of its points.

I have had a pretty hardcore crash course on living out of a suitcase. Some people take consistency in their lives for granted. When you have little to none, you discover it's kind of a nice thing.

You don't want to pigeonhole yourself.

Not everyone needs to be slammed into a category and locked there.

I love changing. I hate it when people try to box me in to a relationship or in a work context. Any situation where I feel boxed in freaks me out. And I feel the need to reinvent myself or I'll get bored.

I don't want to be limited or ghettoized in any way.

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.

I kind of hate the fact that people are always trying to put you into a category. I hate walls, and I hate boundaries. I don't like that. I listen to everything.

These are the instructions you are getting today. It is only fair to tell you, however, that they may be changed tomorrow. And ten days later they may be changed back to the instructions you are getting now.

What's good for you one day will not necessarily still be good for you the day after.

If you think you can grasp me, think again: my story flows in more than one direction, a delta springing from the river bed with its five fingers spread.

Nothing is written stone, child. Even if it were, the stones can be shattered

A bird in the open never looks Like its picture in the birdie books - Or if it once did, it has changed its plumage, And plunges you back into ignorant gloomage.

Everything is illusory. You cannot label something and feel that that is the beginning, middle, and end of it.

Pigeon-holes are only comfortable for pigeons.

I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships, Change as the winds change, veer in the tide.

Be aware that rigidity imprisons.

The people who bind themselves to systems are those who are unable to encompass the whole truth and try to catch it by the tail; a system is like the tail of truth, but truth is like a lizard; it leaves its tail in your fingers and runs away knowing full well that it will grow a new one in a twinkling.

Life isn't divided into genres

I think it is very useful to know ourselves, but when we start naming and labeling, that is dangerous, that gets problematic. It negates that things are always changing. Besides, it's hard to pin a label onto something that's always moving.

There is nothing that one can say about acting, writing, producing or directing that cannot be revoked in the next breath. Nothing is immutable. The logic of one year is a folly of the next.