Dan Aykroyd Quotes

1. I'm really quite robotic.


2. My great-grandfather, Sam Aykroyd, was a dentist in Kingston, Ontario, and he was also an Edwardian spiritualist researcher who was very interested in what was going on in the invisible world, the survival of the consciousness, precipitated paintings, mediumship, and trans-channeling.

3. You know, I've sold a lot of bad movies in my time.

4. My attitude has always been: "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if". If this makes me laugh, maybe somebody else will laugh at it, too. That's really where I've always come from. My whole thing is to entertain, make people laugh and to forget about the real world for awhile. It's not always easy doing that. I'm never completely happy with anything I've done. If I've been successful with 80 percent of everything I've done, then I'm doing all right by the audience and myself.

5. There's that old theory that humankind and this planet were seen as the centre of the universe. That was thrown away - how could we be so presumptuous? Well, I subscribe to that.



6. The Right-wingers everywhere take themselves too seriously, whether in the U.S. or the U.K. And, by the way, so does the Left. The Left can take itself a little too seriously as well.

7. I have this kind of mild nice-guy exterior, but inside my heart is like a steel trap.






8. Am I a trance medium? No. Have I got a gift psychically? Absolutely not. But I believe in the survival of consciousness after death.

9. I wrote many things for and with John. I know this is one assignment he'd rather I didn't have to take on. Although I had a close - head to head, arm to arm working relationship with John, that proximity never affected the fact that from the moment I met him, through all work, I remain his number one fan. He was a brilliant performer, writer, tactician, business strategist and most importantly, he was the only man that I could dance with. He was a great - a world class - emissary of American humor. John was a patriot, a resident of the most wide open, liberal society on earth, and he took full advantage of it. In come cases, real greatness gives license for real indulgence; whether it's as a reward, as therapy or as sanctuary. For as hard as John worked, there had to be an additional illicit thrill to make the effort all worthwhile. John was a nighthawk, true. But he was not an immoral individual. He was a good man, a kind man, a warm man, a hot man. What we are talking about here is a good man - and a bad boy. Johnny - you can be sure that I'll have my antennae out for the paranatural and the spiritual, and believe me, if there's any contact with him, I'll let you know.

10. If it hadn't been for Carleton (University), The Blues Brothers would never have been made.





11. Well, the common enemy in North America is the Western consumer. The consumer has driven oil up to $50 a barrel so we have to have these wars. I think it's incumbent upon us to.

12. "Ghostbusters 3" will never happen. Unless Bill Murray agrees. Everyone else would love to do it -Columbia, (Harold Ramis), myself, (Ivan Reitman). It's a five-way rights situation and Bill is locking up his piece of the rights because he feels that was work he just wants preserved and he doesn't want it diluted. As an artist I can respect that.

13. When I'm not acting, I'm writing, building an inventory of scripts. Even if they sit on the shelf, I just keep stacking them up.



14. (on "The Blues Brothers" sequel) Basically they gave us the budget to make the film. We got paid zero. I wanted James Belushi to play the part Joe Morton did, but he was doing a TV show and couldn't do it. But Morton did a great job and John Goodman did a good job. I think it's a good companion piece to the first film.

15. I bought an island in 1987. It's in one of the lakes in Canada. I went around it in my boat and went to the real estate office and bought it. It's the best $65,000 I've ever spent. My family camp on it and we have great times there.






16. Chevy Chase was the first to make it huge - people would recognize him in the street: "Hey Chubby Chase, look at Chubby Chase". Everybody knew who he was. He was the first to start on a movie career and maybe (John Belushi) was a little jealous. But I liked Chevy and was sorry to see him leave "Saturday Night Live". He's one of the master physical comedians. I think you can place Buster Keaton and Chevy in the same sentence and be pretty safe there.

17. There's huge, massive mother ships going up to the Yukon. They've been filmed and are on video.







18. I could sell used battery acid and make it fly.

19. (when asked if he ever gets recognized for anything) I have this young female demographic that recognizes me as the dad from "My Girl" and this older female demographic that recognizes me as the son from "Driving Miss Daisy".

20. I live in a high rise with my family part of the year in New York and I don't know three quarters of the people in the building. We live in the same square-footage and I wouldn't know who they were.

21. You look at the floor and see the floor. I look at the floor and see molecules.

22. We must come to the point where we realize the concept of race is a false one. There is only one race, the human race.






23. I don't need fame any more. People are less interested in me in terms of celebrity. I'm happy to see a new generation being the media focus. I'm happy my day is done. It's over.

24. I get offers all the time from film makers, but they are unknown quantities. I don't go there and do experiments.






25. (eulogizing his good friend and fellow "Blues Brother", the late great John Belushi) A good man, but a bad boy.

26. We have the most beautiful planet - the Rockies, the purple fields of the United States, the Lake District, the Pyrenees, the turquoise seas of the tropics.

27. American Society for Psychical Research Journals were all around the house when I was a kid.




28. And, I believe that if a man dies with a single penny still sitting in the bank, he's a fool.

29. "Groundhog Day" was one of the greatest comedies ever made.


30. Everyone fears the cut of the blade. It doesn't matter after that. I know the spirit survives as there is so much evidence of the survival of the personality in the afterlife.

31. I live in Canada in the summer and some time in the fall.

32. Folks have to pin me down because, for one thing, I don't have a laptop. I don't have an iPhone, and I refuse to carry them because they're immensely hackable.

33. You do not need a therapist if you own a motorcycle, any kind of motorcycle!

34. I think I'm a narcoleptic. I could sleep on a railway track with a train running over me, in-between the rails.

35. You look at the floor and see the floor. I look at the floor and see molecules.

36. Certainly the format of ghostbusting lends itself to a videogame beautifully.

37. My whole thing is to entertain, make people laugh and to forget about the real world for awhile.

38. Greetings and death to our enemies.

39. I'd make a bad preacher.

40. Have I personally ever seen a ghost? Not one.

41. I've always been a big fan of science fiction and of the worlds of the spiritual and the mystic.




42. I grew up on the edge of a national park in Canada - timberwolves, creeks, snow drifts. I really did have to walk home six miles through the snow, like your grandparents used to complain.

43. Hollywood is in love with any kind of nostalgia that can prove itself to be commercial.

44. I had a slight touch of Tourette's, which means you talk to yourself and bark and cry out at night.


45. I accept sceptics, you've got to have challenges.

46. My first jobs were all civil service. At 14, I worked for the Canadian National Railways. At 16, I worked for the Canadian Penitentiary Service.

47. I don't like people lying to me. I don't like people who don't return my calls. I don't like people who won't give me a straight answer. I don't like those kinds of people, and I've been vocal about it.

48. Heaven to me is percussion and bass, a screaming guitar and a burbling Hammond B-3 organ. It's a soup I love being immersed in.


49. People love gentle larceny.


50. Hygiene is important. That's one of my failings. So I'm always being called on that.

51. I am a spiritualist, a proud wearer of the spiritualist badge.

52. Parodies of commercials are by no means new and have been popular going back to black-and-white TV shows of the '50s.





53. I love to come in and play with a wig or glasses or clothes. I love using props. I'm from the Peter Sellers school of trying to prepare for the character.

54. Politics has got too personal, too nasty, in Britain, as it has in America.



55. I could live on challah bread, the Jewish kosher bread, quite happily.



56. The entertainment business is not the be-all and end-all for me.

57. I drive a V10 Ford Excursion and I have to tell folks all the time: look I've got five kids and a dog and birds. I would have to have two Lincolns with two V8s, you see, so it would be 16 cylinders.


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