Behind every great man there is a woman rolling her eyes.
You can fail at what you don't want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.
Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world. Don't let anything stand in the way of the light that shines through this form. Risk being seen in all of your glory.
I really believe in the philosophy that you create your own universe. I'm just trying to create a good one for myself.
A lot of good love can happen in ten years.
Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything, or creating anything. Period. If you ain't desperate at some point, you ain't interesting.
Life opens up opportunities to you, and you either take them or you stay afraid of taking them.
Maybe other people will try to limit me but I don't limit myself.
I wake up some mornings and sit and have my coffee and look out at my beautiful garden, and I go, 'Remember how good this is. Because you can lose it.'
I'm very serious about no alcohol, no drugs. Life is too beautiful.
Green Eggs and Ham was the story of my life. I wouldn't eat a thing when I was a kid, but Dr. Seuss inspired me to try cauliflower!
People need motivation to do anything. I don't think human beings learn anything without desperation.
I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer.
Ya know what I do almost every day? I wash. Personal hygiene is part of the package with me.
If you aren't in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret.
My focus is to forget the pain of life. Forget the pain, mock the pain, reduce it. And laugh.
I know this sounds strange, but as a kid, I was really shy. Painfully shy. The turning point was freshman year, when I was the biggest geek alive. No one, I mean no one, even talked to me.
You know the trouble with real life? There's no danger music.
My mother was a professional sick person; she took a lot of pain pills. There are many people like that. It's just how they are used to getting attention. I always remember she's the daughter of alcoholics who'd leave her alone at Christmas time.
If you've got a talent, protect it.
Creative people don't behave very well generally. If you're looking for examples of good relationships in show business, you're gonna be depressed real fast. I don't have time for anything else right now but work and my daughter. She's my first priority.
I'm the first to admit this whole salary thing is getting out of control. In the final analysis, it's still about the work.
Maybe there is no actual place called hell. Maybe hell is just having to listen to our grandparents breathe through their noses when they're eating sandwiches.
You know, I live a monastic lifestyle. No, I do. I do live in extremes, basically. I go back and forth. Once every six months, I'll have a day where I eat more chocolate than has ever been consumed by a human being.
We had problems like all families but we had a lot of love. I was extremely loved. We always felt we had each other.
My report card always said, 'Jim finishes first and then disrupts the other students'.
For the most sensitive among us, the noise can be too much.
It is better to risk starving to death then surrender. If you give up on your dreams, what's left?
I try to do something the audience might not have seen before. Like if I'm gonna kiss a girl I wanna kiss her like a girl has never been kissed. Like maybe I would kick her legs out from under her and catch her right before she hits the ground and then kiss her.
I wake up some mornings and sit and have my coffee and look out at my garden, and i go, 'Remember how good this is. Because you can lose it.
The money can be a hindrance to someone like me because the danger is that you start thinking, 'Is that a $20 million take?' That kind of thing, and being self-critical.
As far as I can tell, it's just about letting the universe know what you want and then working toward it while letting go of how it comes to pass.
One thing I hope I'll never be is drunk with my own power. And anybody who says I am will never work in this town again.
I've arrived at the place if I'm not taking a career risk, I'm not happy. If I'm scared, then I know I'm being challenged.
It's time to P-A-R-T-Why? Because I gotta!
I got a lot of support from my parents. That's the one thing I always appreciated. They didn't tell me I was being stupid; they told me I was being funny.
I don't think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain't desperate at some point, you ain't interesting.
Life is an ordeal, albeit an exciting one, but I wouldn't trade it for the good old days of poverty and obscurity.
Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world.
It’s Better to Fail at What You Love Than Fail at What You Don’t.
I love playing ego and insecurity combined.
I am heaven.
I haven't been as wild with my money as somebody like me might have been. I've been very safe, very conservative with investments. I don't blow money. I don't have a ton of houses. I know things can go away. I've already had that experience.
I tend to stay up late, not because I'm partying but because it's the only time of the day when I'm alone and don't have to be performing.
Either you're the one erasing or you're the one being erased.
I refuse to feel guilty. I feel guilty about too much in my life but not about money. I went through periods when I had nothing, so somebody in my family has to get stinkin' wealthy.
My upbringing in Canada made me the person I am. I will always be proud to be a Canadian.
Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.
My dad was like a stage mother he always pushed me to do what I wanted.
I absolutely want to have a career where you make'em laugh and make'em cry. It's all theater.
I'm a hard guy to live with. I'm like a caged animal. I'm up all night walking around the living room. It's hard for me to come down from what I do.
Morgan Freeman is so class. He's so cool. He's so scary.
My life is not unlike Truman's. I can't go anywhere.
I just want to be myself.
But, you know, you can't be a star at home.
I don't make it in regular channels, and that's okay for me.
I want to be the greatest actor that ever lived, frankly. I'd love that. But I don't need to be. I just want to be here. That's it.
I really want to love somebody. I do. I just don't know if it's possible forever and ever.
I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.
Ever since I started to get recognition I've picked out certain fans and reverse-stalked them.
It was such a leap in my career when 'Truman Show' came along. It's always been a long process for me insofar as recognition goes, but that's OK because you appreciate it when it comes.
I need privacy. I would think that because what I do makes a lot of people happy that I might deserve a little bit of respect in return. Instead, the papers try to drag me off my pedestal.
I don't care if people think I am an overactor, as long as they enjoy what I do. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter.
I've tried everything. I've done therapy, I've done colonics. I went to a psychic who had me running around town buying pieces of ribbon to fill the colors in my aura. Did the Prozac thing.
Originality is really important.
Behinf every great man there is a woman rolling her eyes.
What I have in common with the character in 'Truman' is this incredible need to please people. I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.
I used to draw a lot. If my mother would ask me to do something else, I'd have a hairy conniption. I'd just go crazy.
If I had never ventured beyond being a stand-up comic, then I would be sitting in my house today working on my Leonardo DiCaprio impression.
I praticed making faces in the mirror and it would drive my mother crazy. She used to scare me by saying that I was going to see the devil if I kept looking in the mirror. That fascinated me even more, of course.
It's nice to finally get scripts offered to me that aren't the ones Tom Hanks wipes his butt with.
My family kinda hit the skids. We were experiencing poverty at that point. We all got a job, where the whole family had to work as security guards and janitors. And I just got angry.
Before I do anything, I think, well what hasn't been seen. Sometimes, that turns out to be something ghastly and not fit for society. And sometimes that inspiration becomes something that's really worthwhile.
I've never been one to sit back and go, 'I'd better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don't want to lose them.'
There was a time when people said, 'Jim, if you keep on making faces, your face will freeze like that.' Now they just say, 'Pay him!'
When the first big paycheque with 'Dumb And Dumber' hit, I went: 'Gosh, I wonder if this will affect my performance. Will I do a take and think, was that worth $7 million?' But that never happened. If anything, it made me rebel against that thing when people who get rich start playing it safe.
For some reason I did something where I realized I could get a reaction. That was when I broke out of my shell at school, because I really didn't have any friends or anything like that and I just kind of was going along, and then finally I did this zany thing, and all of a sudden I had tons of friends.
I think I could go away tomorrow. I've already accomplished something. It's such a selfish business that sometimes I get sick of myself.
I'm so wrapped up in my work that it's often impossible to consider other things in my life. My marriage ended in divorce because of this, my relationship with Holly has suffered by this.
It's hard for anybody who's been with me not to feel starved for affection when I'm making love to my ideas. Maybe it's not meant for me to settle down and be married.
Some nights it was a melee, literally, where I'd be standing trying to defend myself for what I was doing. People would be screaming at me to do my old act, and getting actually violent and angry at me.
That's the trouble with being me. At this point, nobody gives a damn what my problem is. I could literally have a tumor on the side of my head and they'd be like, 'Yeah, big deal. I'd eat a tumor every morning for the kinda money you're pulling down.'
