Andy Garcia Quotations

The reality is that the work I do is not private work. I bring all my secrets, my life, to my work. Anybody who's seen my work knows everything about me.

Everything I do in my life is very instinctual and in the moment. If I'm attracted to something, that's it. If I have reservations, those don't change till they're resolved. My first impression is how I go.

I'm an exile. My father had the courage to leave with his wife, his mother and three children under twelve. It took more courage to leave, to sacrifice everything for freedom, than to stay.

In a marriage, in any long-term relationship, not to bother with lying. There's no time for that. If you have any sort of secret life, it will come back to haunt you.

When you commit to something, you don't want to let your fellow people and yourself down.

I love to cook, and my wife loves to cook. Sometimes it's the appeal of the simplest of dishes - things you've grown up with in your life. Your emotional memory - something that not only affects your taste buds but that you've got an emotional attachment to.

She is Cuba. If you want to love her, you have to be with her, but you can't be with her in her current state. It's the point of view of all exiles - you have to leave the thing you cherish most.

My uncle, who was a little more flamboyant, always said the guy who dressed the best was Fred Astaire.

You are defined by who you are, by your choices in life, in all regards, not just in doing movies.

I don't think lying has any ultimate justification. I don't think it ever leads to anything positive. The good fight to have is not to lie. That's one of the challenges in a way.

I've had my moments of insanity. But there is a certain responsibility to set proper examples for your children, and that influences your choices in every aspect of your life.

They say a lot of women would like to see me naked, but there's not a lens long enough for that.

You have to love the guy that you play, even if you play the villain, you've got to love him.

Children make you a better everything. Daughters open up a whole different sensibility to you. When you have children, it focuses you on them as opposed to on yourself.

You can't say one thing and behave another way. Kids learn more from watching you in life than what you say to them.

My grandfather was a very elegant individual. My father also. He was a lawyer and farmer in Cuba. In Miami, he had to go to work wherever he could. But whenever it was time to go out, you saw how they cared for how they looked.

It's better not to work than to work in something you don't want to be working in.

I think it's most important for children to understand the concept of respect and manners and also work ethic. I have a responsibility to those who came before me.

If you want to experiment, do something temporary.

I wish we didn't have to tell this story.

Everybody has a dream, and everybody knows people who have a dream that they don't want to share with anybody because they're too embarrassed to share.

My first interest was always music, and somehow that channelled itself into films and acting. I don't know what the natural transition of it was. I mean I acted a little bit when I was young and like any kid would in a community theatre.

I am a traditional man. I'm a product of a traditional man. He sacrificed everything for his family.

Children need parameters, know what's right or wrong.

I don't control the movies that are offered to me, but I make choices based on certain parameters.

If you have the right actors and you can give them the freedom to explore, you've done a lot of your work as a director.

It's impossible for everybody to be in sync, even the most proper family.

Movies are very hard to make, to get it all to come together. So many people have their say in what the end product of films are.

My son loves my carbonara. I've tried to master that recipe - it's very simple but very delicate. Once prepared it must be eaten quickly.

When you explore a scene, the most important thing is who to cast.

Becoming a producer enables you to empower yourself, to make the film that you want to make. I have desires to make movies - I have movies I'm developing, and things that I'm interested in.

I listen to and I play all kinds of music, and I'm interested in jazz and in bluegrass - I like it all - but Cuban music speaks to me in a certain way.

I think if the movie has resonance and stimulates the viewer to talk about it, you can have as large an audience as you want. The most important thing for me is that the movie exists. And that's success enough already.

I'm not the type of person who goes through all this effort for a movie, and then doesn't care if anybody sees it. I want them to see it, and I want them to see it on the big screen.

There's good movies and there's bad movies. The genres are never dead, it's just about how to apply them and articulate them and execute them - the story, the quality of the writing, the acting, the design elements, the directorial execution - all these things make it what it is.

When I met him, he seemed to me a humble man who spoke through his music, and that's the way he's always been, ... He dedicated his life to his music and his art, which transcends cultures and even age.

So for directors, actors, producers, writers-whoever encompasses the creative elements of a film-you have a hit, everyone's happy, and you're the hottest thing in the world. But if the movie doesn't open, then those realities do come into play.

I could talk about him all day. He's the Mozart of Cuban music,

From then on, it was forever looking for a home. But there was never any real fire to make the movie within the system.

I still have a leather jacket my brother wore in the '60s. It doesn't fit me, but I figure maybe it'll fit my daughter.

We didn't bring much out of Cuba. On the way to the airport they searched you and took everything, and then they put you on a plane.

I started in comedy when I first started as an actor on stage and doing improvisational theater and stuff like that. So a lot of people who know me know that sort of side of me. But I got the roles that I got as an young actor kind of steered me in a different direction, which were, at times, darker characters. And so comedy was not something that came easy for people to think of my in those terms.

I go where I'm stimulated. If I'm stimulated, I show up. As Mick Jagger sings: It's my life and I'll do what I want.

Pictures make a lot of money doesn't determine whether the experience was...

It depends. When it's the right scenario, it's just as stimulating and just as exciting for me. It's just a question of finding a piece of material that lights a fire under you.

The size of budgets does not alter my decision if I should do it. If there's a movie with a budget of only $1 million that I find interesting, then I'll sign up, but it has to be in the hands of a director who can do something with it. Ultimately, it's a director's medium.

A man should have a right to be religious if he wants to. The government should not be involved in those decisions.

Freedom was taken away from my family until we landed in America and it was given back to us.

I think good chemistry starts with mutual respect.

I'm a staunch anti-Castro individual.

I'm not worried about walking the streets and looking over my shoulder because of something I might have said.

I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything. I just want (the audience) to have an experience that moves them.

Great writing attracts great actors. It attracts money. Without a great script, you have nothing.

I was a big fan of Joe's film, Narc, so when you hear there's a script coming over from Joe Carnahan, you know it's going to be interesting because he has such a fresh voice.

It's important, when going after a goal, to never lose sight of the integrity of the journey.

That's why you end up producing or directing. Because if you don't try to make these stories, you can't expect anyone else to come up with that idea and offer it to you. So you assume certain aspirations and goals, in order to tell certain tales. So you become the producer out of necessity, maybe not out of real desires.

This celebration means a lot to me because I owe all in my life to the cultural heritage I came from, specifically Cuban American but also Hispanic American. What gets you through the daily struggle of pursuing that dream is rooted in cultural heritage.

A lot of people don't know about Cuban history, and I don't expect them to.

There was madness. These are people who live life differently than most of us. There's that classic thing about being attracted to the one thing that will destroy you. There was madness to their love.

It's a great tragedy. It's become such a politicized situation. The great tragedy is that you have to get on a raft.

It's a great tragedy, ... It's become such a politicized situation. The great tragedy is that you have to get on a raft.

It's looking to the end of an era it's about having to leave the thing you most cherish. It's a celebration of a culture that I hold very dear.

It's fun doing something different each year, ... There's something about testing yourself athletically that makes all of it fun.

I've known Ellen for years. I think she's a great actress.

I was a banquet waiter at the Beverly Hilton hotel. You learn a lot when you're in the service industry-the jerks of the world really come to the fore. It's a valuable learning experience to be in the position where you're of service to someone who sometimes doesn't even know you're there.

It's really about the resilience of the human spirit.

I'll be with it as long as it takes. Certainly, in this business you need a tremendous amount of inner fortitude to be in it for any kind of length of time, and I've already been doing this for twenty years. I'm just going to keep on working on the things that reach me, the things that I want to be associated with and identified with, both as an actor and a filmmaker.

In the '40s and '50s, Havana was the Paris of the Caribbean. Everyone was always well-dressed.

I live in a house full of women, dolls and conga drums!

I approach my work musically a lot in terms of the way maybe a jazz musician would approach an improvisation on a theme.