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'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.'

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.

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

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 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'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.'

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.

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 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.

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

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

Originality is really important.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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 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'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.

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.

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.

If you've got a talent, protect it.

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.'

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 report card always said, 'Jim finishes first and then disrupts the other students'.

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

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.

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.

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.

Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.

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

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

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.

A lot of good love can happen in ten years.

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.

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

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.

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

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 just want to be myself.