Faith & Spirit Quote by Danny DeVito

The charming messiness of Danny DeVito's phrasing is the point: creativity, in his telling, isn’t a lightning bolt of genius so much as a scavenger hunt. “You pick this stuff here and this stuff there” sounds like a kid piling odd treasures into a shoebox, and it quietly demystifies the artistic process. Acting, directing, producing - it’s all collage. You absorb gestures, voices, pain, jokes, street textures, then your mind “starts visualizing” and suddenly there’s a character, a scene, a world.

That everyday language also signals how DeVito wants to be read culturally: not as a Remote Great Artist, but as a working performer who stays in touch with the tactile pleasures of making things. The repeated “stuff” refuses pretension. It’s anti-auteur talk from someone who’s nevertheless built an auteur-like career of outsized, specific characters. The subtext is almost political in its humility: imagination isn’t a private luxury; it’s a practice you earn through attention, collaboration, and persistence.

Then he lands on gratitude - “thank God” - not as piety, but as an acknowledgement of contingency. In an industry that runs on luck, access, and gatekeeping, “I get the chance” is a small, sharp reminder that talent doesn’t automatically equal opportunity. Calling it “the greatest thing in the whole wide world” is unabashed, even corny, but it works because it’s earned joy: the kind that comes from someone who’s been around long enough to know the job is absurd, fragile, and still, somehow, miraculous.