Quotes by Michael Caine

Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.

— Michael Caine

Wisdom

I think what is British about me is my feelings and awareness of others and their situations. English people are always known to be well mannered and cold but we are not cold - we don't interfere in your situation. If we are heartbroken, we don't scream in your face with tears - we go home and cry on our own.

— Michael Caine

Love

To me, growing old is great. It's the very best thing - considering the alternative.

— Michael Caine

Wisdom

Books were my window on the world. Growing up at the Elephant and Castle, which was very rough, my paradise was the library.

— Michael Caine

Life

I felt a tremendous sadness for men who can't deal with a woman of their own age.

— Michael Caine

Wisdom

I'm every bourgeois nightmare - a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars.

— Michael Caine

Wisdom

I come from the slums; I come from a hard background; I come from a poor family; and I was a soldier.

— Michael Caine

Wisdom

The difference between a movie star and a movie actor is this - a movie star will say, 'How can I change the script to suit me?' and a movie actor will say. 'How can I change me to suit the script?'

— Michael Caine

Wisdom

Obsession is a young man's game, and my only excuse is that I never grew old.

— Michael Caine

Wisdom

I started with the firm conviction that when I came to the end, I wanted to be regretting the things that I had done, not the things I hadn't.

— Michael Caine

Wisdom

I feel like 35. At 35 you're old enough to know something and young enough to look forward to what you can do with the knowledge. So I stayed at 35!

— Michael Caine

Education

What a lot of people don't realize about gangs, in my opinion, is that a gang is not there to attack you. Eighty percent of the people in a gang are there to stop anyone from attacking them. You join a gang for protection, not to go out and hit someone.

— Michael Caine

Wisdom

If someone is very upper-class, you have a stereotype of him which is probably true. If someone has a working-class accent, you have no idea who you're talking to.

— Michael Caine

Success

The greatest luxury is not driving. I didn't own a car until I was 30, and that was a Rolls-Royce, so it was cheaper to insure a chauffeur. I never want to drive again. My mind is always on other things. I hate parking, and I'm very short-tempered and would get road rage, I'm sure.

— Michael Caine

Wisdom

I wouldn't make an anti-American film. I'm one of the most pro-American foreigners I know. I love America and Americans.

— Michael Caine

Love

When you reach the top, that's when the climb begins.

— Michael Caine

Wisdom

For all my education, accomplishments, and so called 'wisdom'... I can't fathom my own heart.

— Michael Caine

Love

The absent are never without fault. Nor the present without excuse.

— Michael Caine

Wisdom

Every time you get a movie, you get a medical. So you know, you know you're alright for a couple of weeks.

— Michael Caine

Wisdom

One of the main things about Cockney is, you speak at twice the speed as Americans. Americans speak very slow.

— Michael Caine

Wisdom

In the sixties, everyone you knew became famous. My flatmate was Terence Stamp. My barber was Vidal Sassoon. David Hockney did the menu in a restaurant I went to. I didn't know anyone unknown who didn't become famous.

— Michael Caine

Wisdom

I think life has got to develop as you get older, and I don't want to be wandering along doing the same old thing. I want more out of life.

— Michael Caine

Life

When you're a movie star and you're young, you are always playing someone who's a better fighter, a better lover, a better everything than you.

— Michael Caine

Wisdom

My view of actors is that basically they're all harmless lunatics who'd be on the psychiatrist's couch, except that we get this sort of catharsis every six months or so, and we go and be absolutely someone else.

— Michael Caine

Wisdom