For hundreds of years, that was the major form of entertainment: The grown-ups sat around and watched the kids play. Now they sit around and watch the television. The actors are the kids. – David Duchovny
People always love and respect characters who speak the truth, even if the truth hurts. – David Duchovny
‘The X-Files,’ as I recall, we didn’t know really what we were until the middle of the first year. You know, so if we’d been cancelled, you get cancelled before you mature into what it is you can actually be, which is too bad. – David Duchovny
I think people are always trying to demystify whatever acting is, so they want to know what your method is. – David Duchovny
It’s always a mystery when you’re going into a role – ‘Here’s your wife of 40 years and… action!’ How do you create ease or chemistry or whatever is supposed to exist? – David Duchovny
One of the nice things about acting is that it allows you to open up to the other people within you. – David Duchovny
I love the ocean, wide-open space and trees, but I’m not a gardener or anything like that. I think I may be, eventually. I was raised in the city, so I don’t have that skill set, but my heart is more with the dirt than the concrete. It’s an unrequited love with nature – a one-way love affair. – David Duchovny
Sometimes the better the writing, the harder it is to play because you really want to service it. It’s hard to be that quick and articulate in life. You’ve got to try to make it seem discovered, you know, not rehearsed. – David Duchovny
I mean, there’s chemistry in life and there’s acting chemistry. I’m not saying they’re the same thing, but they’re as mysterious. – David Duchovny
I was about 26 or 27 and it was imperative that I make a living right away and it’s hard to make a living on stage, so I started in television and film. – David Duchovny
Fame does lead to money, which I don’t have a close relationship with. I’m the kind of guy who never sees the money – it all goes somewhere else. I don’t understand it, I don’t like to deal with it. I have a fear of not having it, because I grew up without it. – David Duchovny
If you’re smart, you’ll always be humble. You can learn all you want, but there’ll always be somebody who’s never read a book who’ll know twice what you know. – David Duchovny
I love dogs. They live in the moment and don’t care about anything except affection and food. They’re loyal and happy. Humans are just too damn complicated. – David Duchovny
I’m trying to protect what I advertise. That’s my stance on any kind of self-expression. – David Duchovny
Maybe the best things about celebrity are the things like being able to get that seat on the plane that you wouldn’t normally get, but that’s kind of like cheating. – David Duchovny
Sex is great until you die, but it’s never as great as it was when you were a kid, when it was a mystery. – David Duchovny
I think the real heroic teachers are the ones who work with kids, like my mom and my sister do. – David Duchovny
Chemistry is really about two people who like to act together, I think. It’s like tennis in the most cliched way. It’s like if you hit the ball, they hit the ball back, and they don’t hit it into the stands, and they don’t put the ball in their pocket and walk off – and they don’t argue with the umpire, you know? – David Duchovny
I wanted to write plays. I was at Yale graduate school at the time for English literature, not for acting… I liked the idea of collaboration, and I thought if I’m gonna write plays, I should learn something about speaking the lines that I might try to write. – David Duchovny
I had to work in one of the most beautiful ski resorts in the world for almost three weeks. Pity me. – David Duchovny
I mean, you always want everybody to pat you on the back and tell you you’re wonderful every time you do something; I think that’s human nature. – David Duchovny
A lot of times passion projects or films are difficult to make because they don’t have proven directors attached to them. – David Duchovny
