Either you’re the one erasing or you’re the one being erased.

My life is not unlike Truman’s. I can’t go anywhere.

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!

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.

I really want to love somebody. I do. I just don’t know if it’s possible forever and ever.

Life opens up opportunities to you, and you either take them or you stay afraid of taking them.

I don’t make it in regular channels, and that’s okay for me.

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.

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.

If you aren’t in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret.

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.

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 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.

We had problems like all families but we had a lot of love. I was extremely loved. We always felt we had each other.

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.

A lot of good love can happen in ten years.

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.

I absolutely want to have a career where you make’em laugh and make’em cry. It’s all theater.

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.

But, you know, you can’t be a star at home.

Ya know what I do almost every day? I wash. Personal hygiene is part of the package with me.

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 just want to be myself.

People need motivation to do anything. I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation.

My dad was like a stage mother he always pushed me to do what I wanted.

Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything, or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

I’m very serious about no alcohol, no drugs. Life is too beautiful.

I really believe in the philosophy that you create your own universe. I’m just trying to create a good one for myself.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Either you’re the one erasing or you’re the one being erased.

Ever since I started to get recognition I’ve picked out certain fans and reverse-stalked them.

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.

Maybe other people will try to limit me but I don’t limit myself.

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’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.’

If you’ve got a talent, protect it.

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.

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.

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.

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.’

It’s nice to finally get scripts offered to me that aren’t the ones Tom Hanks wipes his butt with.

Originality is really important.

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.

My focus is to forget the pain of life. Forget the pain, mock the pain, reduce it. And laugh.

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.

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.

My upbringing in Canada made me the person I am. I will always be proud to be a Canadian.

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.

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.’

Morgan Freeman is so class. He’s so cool. He’s so scary.

My report card always said, ‘Jim finishes first and then disrupts the other students’.

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.

Life is an ordeal, albeit an exciting one, but I wouldn’t trade it for the good old days of poverty and obscurity.

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.

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.

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 love playing ego and insecurity combined.

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.

Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.

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.

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.

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!’

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.

It is better to risk starving to death then surrender. If you give up on your dreams, what’s left?