no-one else knows what you're hoping for (6 November 2016)

The Graduate, 1967 with Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft

There’s nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you’re meant to do. It’s like falling in love.

- Mike Nichols

 The Graduate, 1967, Mike Nichols directing Dustin Hoffman

 
In making movies, time is so short - because it is so expensive - that we tend to neglect the place from which the best ideas come, namely that part of ourselves that dreams. The unconscious is our best collaborator.

- Mike Nichols

Catch-22, 1970 with Alan Arkin

Yes. The whole point about laughter is it’s like mercury: you can’t catch it, you can’t catch what motivates it — that’s why it’s funny.

- Mike Nichols

Heartburn, 1986 with Meryl Streep, caught at a dinner party

The degree to which you're peculiar and different is the degree to which you must learn to hear people thinking. Just in self-defense you have to learn, where is their kindness? Where is their danger? Where is their generosity?

- Mike Nichols

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 1966, with George Segal, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton

The only safe thing is to take a chance. Play safe and you are dead. Taking risks is the essence of good work, and the difference between safe and bold can only be defined by yourself since no one else knows for what you are hoping when you embark on anything.

- Mike Nichols

 The Birdcage, 1996 with Nathan Lane and Robin Williams

Mike Nichols