John Cassavetes Quotes

I never know what I want, but always know what I don't want.

I liked things better when I didn't understand them.

The real trouble comes from not knowing what we really want in the first place.

How can you get very far, If you don't know who you are? How can you do what you ought, If you don't know what you've got? And if you don't know which to do Of all the things in front of you, Then what you'll have when you are through Is just a mess without a clue Of all the best that can come true If you know What and Which and Who.

When I get the point, I often don't know what to do with it.

If you don't know what you want, don't say you never had a chance.

When I do not understand, I like to say nothing.

Sometimes it takes a partner to say, "What is it you want?" because I think we operate in life and sometimes we don't know. We're all in some kind of maze going after the cheese at the end, and we get it and we go, "What is it that we want?"

If people really grew up, there would be no crime, no divorce, no Civil War reenactors....it's not like you think it will be, that one day you'll wake up and realize that you've got things figured out. You never figure it out. Ever." - Isabel Spellman attempting to explain growing up to her sister Rae

Talking is not enough; words don't clarify anything. I'll have to hit upon something, but what?

Words can be worrisome, poeple complex, motives and manners unclear, grant her the wisdom to choose her path right, free from unkindness and fear.

Zee said, grumpily, “Liebling, this is not a good idea.” “Zee,” I told him, “I am completely out of good ideas and am doing my best with the bad ones I have left.

We all operate on different levels of awareness. Half the time I don't know what I'm doing.

What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?

Love was like that, like a dream you didn't quite understand, one in which you didn't necessarily know what you were looking at until it was right in front of you.

Working for with someone who has no idea what they wanted... it would just be so all over the place, especially with something on this scale. You have to know what you want with this.

Where there is clarity, there is no choice. And where there is choice, there is misery. But then, why should I speak, since I know nothing?

People like definite decisions, / Tidy answers, all the little ravelings / Snipped off, the lint removed, they / Hop happily among their roughs / Calling what they can't clutch insanity / Or saintliness.

When we must deal with problems, we instinctively resist trying the way that leads through obscurity and darkness. We wish to hear only of unequivocal results, and completely forget that these results can only be brought about when we have ventured into and emerged again from the darkness. But to penetrate the darkness we must summon all the powers of enlightenment that consciousness can offer.

You don't always have to know who you are. Sometimes, it's enough just to know what to do next.

Pooh looked at his two paws. He knew that one of them was the right, and he knew that when you had decided which one of them was the right, then the other one was the left, but he never could remember how to begin.

Confusion is better than stupid conclusions. In confusion, there is still a possibility. In stupid conclusion, there is no possibility.

Never ask people. Not about your work. Don't you know what you want? How can you stand it, not to know?

I know one thing for certain; it is much harder to tell whether you are lost than whether you were lost, for, on many occasions, where you are going is exactly where you are. On the other hand, if you often find that where you've been is not at all where you should have gone, and, since it's much more difficult to find your way back from someplace you've never left, I suggest you go there immediately and then decide.

Throughout history, one of the biggest problems is that the correct course of action is not always obvious, and the obvious course of action is not always correct.