Amitabh Bachchan: Likeness

“I know that there are a lot of areas inside me which I need to analyse. But I need time. I can't be rushed into it. Even if it keeps lingering in the back of my mind always. I keep joking, fooling around on the sets, trying to push everything away for a later day scrutiny. I don't even want to acknowledge those dark corners of my insides as yet. And if at all I do it, I'll do it for no one else but myself. Not my wife, not my parents. Maybe my children - maybe just my son. Nobody else. Of course, there is also another way of looking at things. Supposing I did not have this pressure of talking to the media, maybe people like you and others would have always thought of me as somebody else. I don't know what opinion of me you have now. I don't know what you felt before you met me, how you felt while you were interviewing me and how you feel today and how you'll feel tomorrow. But I'm sure there will be a difference. Because forming an opinion without meeting a person and judging your instincts and impressions after meeting him are two different things. Most people I've met of late have gone back thinking exactly the contrary of what they thought earlier. I've tried to be as honest as I can with you. I can tell you that I've never spoken like this to anyone before. I wonder if you're convinced. You don't look it. Maybe I will convince you someday.”

Amitabh Bachchan

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Children , People , Fools , Way

“I didn't like Jaya's Hazaar Chaurasi ki Ma, though I did like her performance. I felt the movie was too verbose. I thought why did they have to make a film? They could have simply written an article.”

Amitabh Bachchan

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

“Truly I don't know what a 60-year chap is supposed to feel. I like doing some of the things that my son does. I love the kind of clothes the young wear. I love going to their hangouts. I love to talk like them. I'd love to be included in their evenings out, I don't see myself in a rocking chair reading a book.”

Amitabh Bachchan

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Love , Books , Feeling , Reading

“Me a playboy?! You must be joking. But playing something like Robert Redford's role in Indecent Proposal would be a pleasant surprise.”

Amitabh Bachchan

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

“I never expected to play lead roles! Primarily, because I was not the conventional good looking hero, and in fact, I used to feel I’ll never look as good as Rajesh Khanna. Why the hell am I going into it? Now that we are being frank and talking our hearts out, I’d like to say that I still remember a photograph of Kaka's which came in Filmfare and I thought ‘yaar, ye aadmi kya khaata hain? Iske gaal itne lal kaise hain?”

Amitabh Bachchan

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Feeling , Hell , Heart

“I think that I’m at a stage where the onus and the responsibility of the leading man, and therefore the onus and responsibility of the success of the film, and its marketing and its sale etc, is really not on my shoulders. Therefore, let me do what is coming my way. Therefore to do something like a Nishabd or even a Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag…well, I enjoyed doing them. Okay, people didn’t like it and they trashed it. And that’s fine, we must respect that. But I didn’t mind doing those roles because they tested my creativity and I enjoyed doing them.”

Amitabh Bachchan

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

People , Way , Thinking , Success

“I was very shy as a child. Very shy. Lot of problems with very simple things. Like entering a restaurant all by myself.”

Amitabh Bachchan

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Problem

“There is always this criticism that the lyricism and the poetry and the language and the dialogues of the past, the written word, is not so prevailing now. To some extent, yes. For somebody that has lived through those years and come back, I feel that when I go to concerts and when I go to public events, nobody asks me to recite dialogues from Baghban or Paa (laughs), they say ‘can we have Deewar?’ or ‘Can we have Agneepath?’ or whatever. So I’m assuming, therefore, that there was a lot more strength and value in those dialogues than what we have now. But I think that, in defense of today’s generation, maybe they don’t want it. They don’t like too many words. This generation is very cryptic in the way it communicates, they’ll have just one or two words where we used to use four of five sentences in our time. That attention span has become very short. So they use one or two words, ‘it’s cool’ or ‘you’re rocking’, to describe the whole feeling. That is the style of the younger generation and if this is what they want, we must make films that follow it.”

Amitabh Bachchan

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Way , Feeling , Communication , Thinking

“During those five years (of retirement), I traveled a lot and in some of the cities I visited, there was a kind of immediate recognition, whether it was Egypt or the Middle-East, or Russia or Africa. This kind of surprised me. It wasn't so much a reflection on me. It was a reflection on the Hindi film industry. People didn't know me by name, they knew me by my film name. They sang my songs when they saw me on the street, and came up to me and called me Vijay, for instance. I felt that if there is so much recognition of this medium and this industry in totally non-traditional regions of the world, why is it that something is not being done to market this or to promote it at a much larger scale? This is when I thought of the idea of forming a corporation much like international corporations worldwide to get a kind of professionalism and a kind of corporate attitude to the entertainment industry in this country and to be able to exploit it in all parts of the world. That was the attraction. That really brought me back again. Also, during my 30-year career, one of the accusations that used to come my way was that you've never invested back into the film industry. You've invested in pharmaceuticals, in this and that. But you've never invested your money back into the industry. But here, I felt, was one activity that was very genuine. I really was putting money back to raise the standard of working in the industry”

Amitabh Bachchan

On his motivation behind starting ABCL
Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Money , People , World , Way

“A seed is small in size. But it carries in its womb leaves, flowers, fruits, nay even the whole tree. The human brain is very much like a seed. It may not have a great shape and size. But it traps within itself endless possibilities. It is a fountainhead of thoughts and promises that can be fulfilled.”

Amitabh Bachchan

Source: Soul Curry for You and Me: An Empowering Philosophy that Can Enrich Your Life, P. 113.

Flowers , Tree

“I couldn’t possibly do a love story like Maine Pyar Kiya. I can perhaps do a more mature love story. Then again, we tried a love story with Silsila but it didn’t work. One thing is for sure, we can’t be doing what Salman is doing.”

Amitabh Bachchan

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Love

“When I was exposed to brighter lights, I began noticing prettier things, faster cars, motorbikes…girls! Then just like any young man I wanted it all!”

Amitabh Bachchan

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Cars , Girl , Light

“I hate to talk about the accident. It's like really pushing me into areas that I've put away. It's going to be difficult. See, I never knew that I was going to die. I knew that there was something very wrong with me but I never knew that I was going to die. And the entire period when I was seemingly gone, when I was struggling for life, I was in a state of coma. I was unconscious. That was the difficult period for my family. It was easy for me because I was oblivious. The difficult period for me started after I got okay. When you're told what you've been through. And it's not enough that you've been told. The worst phase is when you discover that what they have told you is, in fact, true. Your entire body is finished from within. You're in full bloom, you're healthy and you're full of life and gusto. And to suddenly find that the body is not there. You can't move your fingers. Your legs can't support you. And your whole system has gone through a battering. But you know that it was there. It was just there the other day. How come it's not working? It was a very frightening time.”

Amitabh Bachchan

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Life , Hate , Family , Support