Failure and its accompanying misery is for the artist his most vital source of creative energy.

- Montgomery Clift

The closer we come to the negative, to death, the more we blossom.

- Montgomery Clift

Look, I'm not odd. I'm just trying to be an actor; not a movie star, an actor.

- Montgomery Clift

The only line that's wrong in Shakespeare is 'holding a mirror up to nature.' You hold a magnifying glass up to nature. As an actor you just enlarge it enough so that your audience can identify with the situation. If it were a mirror, we would have no art.

- Montgomery Clift