Staring Quotes

See also Stare Quotes

A fella came up to me the other day with a nice story. He was in a bar somewhere and it was the quiet time of the night. Everybody`s staring down at the sauce and one of my saloon songs comes on the jukebox, "One for My Baby", or something like that. After a while, a drunk at the end of the bar looks up and says, jerking his thumb toward the jukebox, "I wonder who he listens to?"

- Frank Sinatra

"I think music will always be a big part of my life. I can`t go five minutes without singing, sometimes unconsciously. And people stare at me, and I`m wondering why they`re staring, and then I`m realizing that I`m belting out a tune." (on music)

- Justin Timberlake

I had spent weeks staring at the wall in my house out of depression because of things that had gone wrong and the choices I had made. When I read "The Machinist" (Maquinista, El (2004)), I just went, "Wow! This is perfect". I was having dreams about the character and I couldn`t stop thinking about it. I felt like this one was going to save my arse, and pull me out of the depressed state I had got into.

- Christian Bale

On fame: "I think I went insane. I was ridiculously paranoid because I had the most insufferably frustrating level of celebrity. It wasn`t at all anything I could get sympathy for. I wasn`t Kate Winslet. I was just a little TV girl but I felt people were staring at me. In Toronto, people would literally hit me and tell me to get them a muffin, and laugh". (This refers to the success she found on the TV show "The Newsroom" (1996), where her character`s boss was always sending her to find the right kind of muffin.)

- Tanya Allen

With the first record I was very overwhelmed - a scared little chicken - because I felt like people were staring at me and I didn`t have any clothes on or something. Now, people aren`t really staring at me, so I`m able to be more comfortable with myself.

- Norah Jones

(1987 comment on Robert De Niro) He`s very low-key and concentrated when he`s working. The thing that gets in the way of his work is people staring at him. So what you have to do on the set when he`s working is to get people who are just going to gawk out of his eyeline. With the other actors he`s very tuned, very responsive.

- Brian De Palma

I was aware of people staring at me. No one moved. They seemed almost in trance. I just stared at the clock in the center of the church. When I finished, everyone clapped and started crying.

- Whitney Houston

On his fear of badgers: I`ve never been bitten by one or anything like that, they just look evil to me. Even watching The Wind in the Willows they scared me. It was like the Devil staring straight into my eyes. It`s something I`ve never outgrown. Even today, just the thought of badgers absolutely terrifies me. Hell to me is a room full of badgers.

- Clive Owen

"The most drunk I ever got was at a private view for a college art show. I think I had two bottles of tequila and completely lost about ten hours. I woke up in a cell and, when my vision cleared, I found myself staring at a Nepalese soldier in full uniform. He didn`t speak any English and he was just very alarmed that I was in there with him. When I asked the coppers what had happened, they said, `Well we found you at Euston station, unconscious and surrounded by a group of tramps, so we thought we`d bring you here for your own good.` I`d had all my money taken, so I had to walk home."

- Damon Albarn

I`d spent my entire teenage years suffering one unrequited love affair after the other. I was so shy I couldn`t even talk to girls. If I fancied them, I`d follow them home, but I didn`t have the guts to approach them. I was a teenage stalker. The same went for John. The first time I saw him he was this geek with nicotine-stained fingers, trembling with fear at the prospect of having to meet people. And his name wasn`t even John. It was Nigel. He was a Nigel with glasses, poor sod. I remember staring at his face and slowly realizing that he was rather beautiful, exquisite in fact. I mean, this was the best looking guy I`d seen in years, maybe my whole life. Losing his glasses and changing his name to John was the best thing he ever did. He was a man transformed. To see him in action was incredible. He could charm the knickers off anyone.

- Simon Le Bon

Everywhere I go, somebody is staring at me. I don`t know if people are staring because they recognize me or because they think I`m a weirdo.

- Leonardo DiCaprio

Everywhere I go, somebody is staring at me, I don`t know if people are staring because they recognize me or because they think I`m a weirdo.

- Leonardo DiCaprio

(On her engagement to rocker David M. Navarro): "We met on November 10th, so the 10th of every month we go out to dinner and we make a big event out of it. We have this digital camera that Miramax gave me during a movie. And we took pictures all over -- we travel everywhere together. Usually, I`m just the girl and I bring out the camera, `Baby, come on, lets look`. And he`s like (rolls eyes) `Ok Babe` -- It`s kinda boring to him. This night, he brought out the camera and we were looking at the pictures together. And he was down on one knee the whole time and I wasn`t even aware of that, because he was on the edge of the bed. And the very last picture was him holding up the ring. And then he proposed to me. We cried -- I said `Yes`, and we spent five hours just staring into each others eyes. It was really sweet. He`s a good guy. Well, maybe a little more than just staring..." -- Carmen on "The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn" (1999).

- Carmen Electra

(When asked what romantic character he would want to be) (Pablo Picasso). I love the idea that he used to just sit and stare at an empty canvas for as long as 12 hours straight. If you keep staring at the canvas, the hope is that something or someone will come to mind. That`s a romantic notion in itself.

- Al Pacino

(on the rape scene of Deliverance (1972) (from the book "My Life" published by Hyperion.)): The day before we shot the scene I noticed McKinney hovering beside Ned (Ned Beatty) and sat down between them. I wanted him to see I was Ned`s friend. No different than in the script. Then I asked him how he planned to handle the rape scene. McKinney turned out to be a pretty good guy who just took the method way too far. Staring straight at Ned, he whispered, "I`ve always wanted to try that. Always have." Ned shouted, "John! Oh, John!". In his brilliance, Boorman (John Boorman) reassured Ned but also brought in several additional cameras, knowing Ned wasn`t going to give him a second, third or fourth take. Ned was only going to do the brutal scene once. When it came down to shooting it, Cowboy and McKinney were hands-down brilliant. Scared the shit out of everybody who saw the movie. People crawled out of the theatre. None of that creepy "squeal, piggy, piggy" stuff was in the script. But McKinney, I swear-to-God, really wanted to hump Ned. And I think he was going to. He had it up and he was going to bang him. It`s the first and only time I have ever seen camera operators turn their heads away. Finally, I couldn`t stand it anymore. I ran into the scene, dove on McKinney, and pulled him off. Boorman, hot on my tracks, helped hold him down. Ned, who was crying from both rage and fear, found a big stick and started beating him on the head. Half a dozen guys grabbed Ned and pulled him away. We separated the two of them and let things cool off.

- Burt Reynolds

(on Bill McKinney, with whom he worked in the drama Deliverance (1972) (from the book "My Life" published by Hyperion.)): I thought the other guy, Bill McKinney, was a little bent. I used to get up at five in the morning and see him running nude through the golf course while the sprinklers watered the grass. A strange dude, he moved to L.A. after Deliverance (1972) and worked in a lot of pictures of Clint Eastwood. He always played sickos, but he played them well. With my dark sense of humor, I was kind of amused by him. But as we got closer to the rape scene, I caught him staring at Ned Beatty in an odd, unnerving way. Ned would see it, and look away.

- Burt Reynolds

I had spent weeks staring at the wall in my house out of depression because of things that had gone wrong and the choices I had made. When I read The Machinist, I just went, `Wow! This is perfect.` I was having dreams about the character and I couldn`t stop thinking about it. I felt like this one was going to save my arse, and pull me out of the depressed state I had got into.

- Christian Bale

It`s a great thriller or mystery, but on another level it`s a film about the fact that, if you only look at a person through one lens, or only believe what you`re told, you can often miss the truth that is staring you in the face.

- Kevin Spacey

They`re very quiet. You can tell that there`s something that they`re about to do. They have the track walks before the race. They go and do their thing, and not a word is spoken between any of them. They`re just staring at the track.

- Mike Vogel

Remember, you can always find East by staring directly at the sun.

- Nancy Cartwright

I remember just lying in the grass, staring at the clouds, wondering where they drifted off to after they floated over Texas. I never would have imagined that one day I would follow one of those clouds and find myself in Hollywood.

- Renée Zellweger

I was born close to the ocean and live close to it. I spent all my Sundays on the ocean, and to me it will always be a magical place. I can always find different memories in my head, but special moments were on the ocean or staring at the sea-falling in love, playing, or just talking to myself. It kind of seduces you. But lately I`ve been fearing it a little bit because of the sharks, the attacks, you know? But then again, they were there first.

- Shakira

(On accepting her Golden Globe in 2007 without a written speech) "The Globes night was a frenzy: I hadn`t written anything. I looked down at the audience and Jack Nicholson was staring up at me and I couldn`t even remember what my bloody name was. So I have learnt my lesson!".

- Emily Blunt

When I write, it`s there. There`s no staring at a blank page.

- Bono

You feel a sense of urgency, especially at my advanced age, when you`re staring into the grave.

- Frank McCourt

Man looks in the abyss, there`s nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss.

- Hal Holbrook

If I were to play somebody who ran a fish and chip shop, I would not work in a fish and chip shop for three months. Staring at chips is not going to help me in my performance.

- Ben Kingsley

I get paranoid about people staring at me. Even now I don`t deal with people looking at me. I can`t do it sometimes. I can`t go out. I don`t know how to react when people stare.

- Robbie Fowler

"I can`t watch a kid go by without staring at it and being scared that its mother thinks you`re going to kidnap it or something."

- Shaznay Lewis

Life shouldn`t be about sitting around staring at frosted glass. Life should be lived and that`s all there is to it.

- Oliver Reed

You can forgive people who do not follow you through a philosophical disquisition; but to find your wife laughing when you had tears in your eyes, or staring when you were in a fit of laughter, would go some way towards a dissolution of the marriage.

- Robert Stevenson

(asked to name her most prized possession:) "My cats. Bjorn and Brian Dennehy. They`re Abyssinian. They`re amazing, they`re really like dogs. I actually went to a psychic once, and she said, `You have two cats.` And I said, `Yes, I do.` And she said, `Yeah, there`s one in particular, he`s brown, he`s a deep thinker, that cat.` So every time I see Bjorn staring into the fire, I`m like, `Are you having deep thoughts, Bjorn?`" (February 2, 2003)

- Emma Caulfield

I didn`t know who was on the team, but I saw every eye as I walked down the aisle. It looked like a thousand eyes were staring right at me saying, `Who is this young punk?` I just kept my eyes straight ahead.

- Al Kaline

Right now, whatever the reason, we are not doing enough to win consistently and we have to definitely try to put it together so we can win consistently, because we have a great opportunity staring us in the face and it would be a shame to let it get away.

- Preston Wilson

If the world could remain within a frame like a painting on the wall, I think we`d see the beauty then and stand staring in awe.

- Conor Oberst

(on enduring lengthy sessions in the makeup chair to be transformed into Lorne on "Angel":) "The makeup artist makes it so comfortable. This year, he even bought a 13-inch, flat-screen TV and a DVD player, so I can watch movies when I`m in there. Before, it was three hours staring at the mirror. He and I talk, but there are a lot of times I can`t talk because he`s working on me. He keeps the air-conditioning on for me. It`s so pleasant. I couldn`t ask for anything more. I used to have a lot of difficulty with it, but now it`s cool." (March 14, 2003)

- Andy Hallett

There were times when I would finish writing a sequence and I would see the face of my very well-mannered, deeply Presbyterian mother staring back at me from my imagination, looking at me with her lips pursed like, `Douglas, what do you think you`re doing?` ... But if you`re tackling a figure like Sade, you have a moral obligation to be true to his spirit.

- Doug Wright

You`d think that radio was around long enough that someone would have coined a word for staring into space.

- Ira Glass

I thought they were staring at me because I was gay. But it was because I was on the telly.

- Julian Clary

But whenever I look at the question of how to live, the answer`s always staring me in the face. I`m already doing it.

- Damien Hirst

She wasn`t crying, ... Brandy said it hurt but, she was just sitting there staring ahead.

- Anna Johnson

Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild, harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people`s characters.

- Adam Markham

I keep pointing at the child; they keep staring at my finger.

- Adam Moore

Now suddenly there was nothing but a world of cloud, and we three were there alone in the middle of a great white plain with snowy hills and mountains staring at us; and it was very still; but there were whispers.

- Al Trout

I sat staring, staring, staring - half lost, learning a new language or rather the same language in a different dialect. So still were the big woods where I sat, sound might not yet have been born.

- Alderman Joe Charles

Solitary confinement ... Two months of staring at the four walls of my hotel room.

- Angela Morgan

The financial side of it is pleasant of course, but that is not the main reason for me leaving my parental home in Balen. I would like to lead a bit of a normal life again. It will be nice to walk down the street without people staring at me. Every day there`s a dozen of interested fans at my front door; it`s getting too much. I`m getting a bit fed up with having to tell the same story twenty times a day to people I don`t know at all, or having to listen to their stories. Monaco will be a better place for me to train also, in winter I often don`t have the courage to go out in the bad weather, in the South training will be easier.

- Ann Oakley

She was sitting right there, staring back at me. She looked very happy.

- Anna Weber

We try to give them a little leeway. They`re not always staring at their watches.

- Anya Martinez

The Northeast is staring down the barrel of a gun.

- Art Bruner