Viggo Mortensen on the Tough Lessons He Learned from His Son
By: Esquire Classics
Tags: Esquire, Viggo Mortensen, What Ive Learned

Respect is listening.

I remember staying up late at night as a kid when I was supposed to be sleeping, listening to the radio. I’d listen to it quietly out of necessity — to not be found out. Especially on a school night. I had this idea, which may be true, that I could train myself to hear very low sounds by turning the volume lower and lower and seeing how low I could drop it and still hear.

No is just a word. That’s a good principle.

Life can end at any second, and often does. Which is just a reminder: Pay attention.

What you learn as a photographer is that depending on the angle of the camera, things look different.

The McDonald’s french fry is unbelievable. When you bite into it, you think: It’s so tasty, it can’t be real. As soon as it gets cold, it turns to lard and flubble. I mean, have you ever tried to eat a McDonald’s french fry that’s gone cold? That’s one of the circles of hell. The gulf between the warm, fresh, lightly salted McDonald’s french fry and the cold McDonald’s french fry is as great a gulf as any I know.

A friend is someone who listens to you no matter how stupid the things you’re saying may be.

Life is pretty chaotic. You’re bounced here and there. You really can’t control world events or traffic or the weather or how your body’s going to function moment to moment. You just can’t. No matter how smart you are and how much money you have and how many doctors you see. You really can’t control life no matter how hard you try. But it’s good to take a nap every once in a while.

The same problems keep on coming back at us in different guises.

There are people who go to museums who look at paintings and think: Shit, I could’ve done that. But you didn’t.

Ideally, there is no difference between love and sex.

I don’t think it matters whether you’re married or not. It’s a question of listening and respecting the other person. Not trying to have it all your way, you know?

My son has taught me to forgive. I saw him doing it with me. I saw him accept me even at my worst.

The first teacher is Mother Nature. It starts with: I’m hungry. It ends with: I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.

The best things are the most sensible.

No curiosity? That’s death. Curiosity is what keeps me going.

People say: Oh, he’s a Method actor. There is no such thing. That’s like peace. What’s peace, you know? What’s Method acting? A method is whatever works.

Laws are there to keep honest men honest.

It’s imposing your dream on others that does damage.

Hippies get a bad name because they make people nervous. There’s nothing wrong with giving a stranger on the street a hug or walking around naked. But once you’re doing it as a political movement, it’s dead.

I think it was Robert Louis Stevenson who said it. “The main thing is to travel hopefully, and the true success is to labor.”

What makes me laugh? Anything that reminds me of what I know in my heart. Which is that life is absurd.

You can read all the philosophers in the world, you can listen to every single person — whether they’re wise or not — you can talk until you’re blue in the face. You can live in a cave, not say anything for years. You can try to clean yourself out completely. In the end, all you have any say over is: What kind of human being am I?

The United Nations. I happen to like that idea. Two words. United Nations. Is that possible? Not entirely.

I could be from New York as well as anywhere else, I suppose.

Drama. People want drama. To provoke it. To watch it. To participate in it. Because it makes them feel alive.

Democracy is a concept. It’s about the process of coexisting. It’s about a relationship. We have this idea that it would be good to get along and learn things from each other. It’s a good idea. But it’s not the final event. It’s not an accomplishment that’s possible to attain and maintain for any period of time.

Speculate all you want. But all you can really know is you. And even you, you’ll never really know.

It’s impossible to survive. But it’s what you do in reaction to that which probably says the most about any given person.

It’s the endlessly entertaining, often ridiculous, sometimes admirable, sometimes embarrassing attempts that some people make to find some meaning in their lives that make life worth living.

Tag, you’re it.

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