James Cagney > Quotes

“You dirty rat...”
― James Cagney

“I hate the word superstar". I have never been able to think in those terms. They are overstatements. You don`t hear them speak of Shakespeare as a superpoet. You don`t hear them call Michelangelo a superpainter. They only apply the word to this mundane market”
― James Cagney

“My childhood was surrounded by trouble, illness, and my dad's alcoholism, but as I said, we just didn't have the time to be impressed by all those misfortunes. I have an idea that the Irish possess a built-in don't-give-a-damn that helps them through all the stress.”
― James Cagney

“I`m sick of carrying guns and beating up women.”
― James Cagney

“Where once was a vertebrae is now a tangle, from constant kissing at an awkward angle.”
― James Cagney, Cagney by Cagney: An Autobiography

“Don't cry, there is enough water in the goulash already”
― James Cagney

“You dirty double crossing rat”
― James Cagney

“Seeing the placenta as
nebula
a star-field of skin
a chandelier from which
we're all suspended
flaring out from the same
light.”
― James Cagney

“& as for ya’ll tired,
ya’ll poor
ya’ll huddled masses
yearning to breathe free

Fuck ya’ll!”
― James Cagney, Martian: The Saint of Loneliness

“I didn’t have to psych myself up for the scene in which I go berserk on learning of my mother’s death. You don’t psych yourself up for those things. You do them. I knew what deranged people sounded like. As a youngster I had visited Ward’s Island. A pal’s uncle was in the hospital for the insane. My God, what an education that was. The shrieks. The screams of those people under restraint. I remembered those cries. I saw that they fit the scene. I called on my memory to do as required. No need to ‘psych up.’” JAMES CAGNEY, Cagney by Cagney”
― James Cagney

“those days, some stores sold broken chips of Nabisco cream crackers at a penny a bag. Quite a bargain. Bill got a sack of these chips with one of his pennies, and my sweet tooth”
― James Cagney, Cagney by Cagney: An Autobiography