Ryan Gosling

I need a break from myself as much as I imagine the audience does.

I'm not very good at knowing what people want. I don't have that talent. The best I can do is make films that resonate with me and see what happens.

I've lost perspective on what I'm doing. I think it's good for me to take a break and reassess why I'm doing it and how I'm doing it. And I think this is probably a good way to learn about that. I need a break from myself as much as I imagine the audience does.

My mom was really cool.

I just have my own taste, and I just try and stick with that. I'm just trying to play as many characters as I can for as long as I have an opportunity to.

You feel good if you've done hard work. You sleep better. You get stuck in your head if you have too much time to think.

Maybe in my life I sort of put myself in situations that were chaotic, outside of my life.

Women are better than men.

I've always liked women more. I was brought up by my mother and older sister. I found my way into dance class.

It was a strange experience, making a love story and not getting along with your co-star in any way.

I love 'An American in Paris.' That's the one for me. Some of the visual ideas in that film are just haunting and very free.

I danced a little as a kid here in Canada: in Ottawa at the Elite Dance Studio and at the Top Hat Dance School in Cornwall where I grew up. So I had some experience of having to learn routines.

I grew up Mormon. I wasn't really Mormon, my parents were.

Falling in love is a narcissistic endeavor. You play the role of lover, and you find someone to act it out on.

I make a mean tuna fish sandwich.

I had a lot of romanticised ideas of what Detroit was like, but I didn't get there until I was 30, and it was very different than I had imagined it.

When you meet your kids, you realize that they deserve great parents. And then you have your marching orders, and you have to try and become the person that they deserve.

I had my hustle. It was whatever I could do to not end up working in a factory. If I had to shake it like a showgirl, I was going to do it.

People don't step outside themselves and make the film they want to make, because they're afraid of the reaction. But once you get that reaction and have lived through it, there's nothing they can do to get you down.

I grew up in a town called Cornwall, Ontario, which is about an hour outside of Montreal.

The people of Disney are so incredibly amazing; they are so nice.

If Russell Crowe says that he's Noah, he's Noah. You never doubt it. If he says that he's the Gladiator, he's the Gladiator. He's every character that he says he is. I've never doubted anything that he's done.

I really believe my films are going to be successful, that I'm making 'The Blair Witch Project' - something that will transcend expectations and resonate with people.

I am who I am because of you.

I didn't want to make a literal film about Detroit, because it felt like what they were experiencing was more universal than that.

I'm attracted to films that have strong female characters because there are strong female characters in my life. That's my own reality, so it's a doorway into a world for me.

I read a lot of script. In my opinion, most of them aren't good or aren't about people.

I just sort of take it from a character perspective, and I don't know if he was necessarily spiritual, but I do think he had hope. He was a character that was comfortable having hope in his life, and hope is faith.

My home life now is mostly women. They are better than us. They make me better.

I did this scene in 'Lars and the Real Girl' where I was in a room full of old ladies who were knitting, and it was an all-day scene, so they showed me how. It was one of the most relaxing days of my life.

In New York, you're forced to deal with life; it's there in front of you on a daily basis.

My mother had to tailor what I watched.

I always wanted to entertain. When I was six, a scrawny, scrawny kid, I'd get in my red speedo and do muscle moves. I actually thought I was muscular. I didn't know everyone was laughing at me.

Do you remember when Fabio got hit in the face with a pigeon on the roller coaster, and it broke his nose? Sometimes I feel like I'm the pigeon, and the Internet is Fabio's face. Actually, I don't know if I'm the pigeon, or I'm Fabio's face. Depends on the day, I guess.

It's not good just to have life experience of film-making and that's all. It's hard to play a real person when you've been in jets and town cars for three years.

The Internet is just an abstract place. Sure, I've become part of that in some way, but it's hard for me to wrap my head around a lot of it. I prefer just to kind of stay out of it.

I think I was always bound to become two selves, if I wasn't already.

I think 'Believer' and 'Leland' were such great things to have been a part of, and I learned a lot.

When I made 'The Notebook,' the director, Nick Cassavetes, who is John's son, used to show me his father's movies.

When my mother and I walked to the grocery store, men would circle the block in cars. It was very, very scary, especially as a young boy. Very predatory - a hunt.

A car is only trouble at a certain point.

I don't know specifically what scenes I'd like to see violence in - I crave violence when I'm watching a John Hughes movie.

There's a lot of pressure to be the lead of a film. I have done it. It's not my favorite way to work.

I don't like the process of meeting someone and you make a film and that's it. You think you're just getting started, and then it's over.

You can tell so much about somebody by the films they make, and it's only while I approach this do I now realize how much of the filmmaker you can see in their films.

I loved growing up in Canada. It's a great place to grow up because - well, at least where I grew up - it's very multicultural. There's also good health care and a good education system.

I'm waiting to get old - I think old guys with tattoos look good.

I don't know enough about manliness to define it.

I grew up on Shane Black movies, and I grew up on Joel Silver movies.

Freedom is such a gift.

Certainty is not to be had. But as we learn this we become not more moral but more resigned. We become nihilists.

That's the power of film. If it's good, it can somehow make you feel connected to even the farthest thing from your own experience.

Some of the styles of dance in 'La La Land' I wish I had spent time on when I was a kid.

'The Nice Guys' fulfilled my 1970s fantasy.

This is going to sound ridiculous, but I remember watching 'Boyz n the Hood,' and there is a scene where Cuba Gooding, Jr. gets pressed against a car by a police officer, and he starts crying because it's so humiliating. I remember thinking in that moment that I could totally identify with him, and I'm a little white kid from Canada.

My first exposure to what Hollywood was like, behind the scenes, was when Joel Silver started screaming at Roger Rabbit at the beginning of 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit.'

It's interesting the kind of freedom the musical form gives you. The rules are out the window. You can get impressionistic without seeming pretentious. Because it's perceived as an inherently accessible form, it gives filmmakers some leeway.

So its not gonna be easy. Its gonna be really hard. Were gonna have to work at this every day but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you forever you and me every day.

There used to be a candy called 'Bonkers,' which I believe to be the greatest candy of all time.

I don't like to be entertaining. I don't like the feeling of being entertaining. If there was a musical or a comedy that was not just for entertainment but was rooted in something I could relate to on a real level, then I think I would do it.

For me, I sort of felt like it was kind of a fairytale... but an interesting one. I don't know of anybody who has had a romance quite like this, but I certainly know people who have stuck it out.

You can't geek out with a lot of people about Linda Manz.

If I'm still acting at 46, I'll be surprised.

I think we just knew that we had a movie when Rachel walked in the room.

I think it's more interesting to see people who don't feel appropriately. I relate to that, because sometimes I don't feel anything at all for things I'm supposed to, and other times I feel too much. It's not always like it is in the movies.

For now, I'm just going to keep doing the work and hope I don't get fired. If people want to put me up on their walls, I'll love it.

It's not easy to leave your hometown and your family and your support system and come out to Los Angeles to - to pursue a dream where the odds are not in your favor.

I still go to Disneyland as much as I can. The Haunted Mansion is my favorite ride.

Actors become very professional and proficient about watching out for each other's light and not stepping on each other's lines.

I'm from Canada, and I think, like everyone growing up anywhere else in the world, you are very aware of America - it sort of looms large in its legend, and so did Detroit.

If I eat a huge meal and I can get the girl to rub my belly, I think that's about as romantic as I can think of.

I grew up on Mel Brooks films. That was film to me until I got a little bit older and realised there were other kinds of movies.

I think the 'Law of Attraction' comes from a rich, white, privileged perspective.

There's good things about going to church.

I feel like everything has happened naturally.

I don't even think of myself as particularly good looking, and not at all a typical kind of Hollywood leading man sort of actor.

When my films don't do well, I'm hurt and surprised. It's discouraging.

If people want to put me up on their walls, I'll love it.

My uncle was an Elvis impersonator - his name was Perry, and he went by 'Elvis Perry' - and my work as a wedding singer landed me a spot in his act.

I've been doing this since I was 12... I don't want to act much longer; I can't do one thing my whole life.

Anybody could write a bad script, and I'm one of them, you know?

I like working with actresses, and I like women a lot, not for obvious reasons, but just in that that there's so much about what they bring to the scene that keeps it so interesting. Their instincts are so different, and they never explain them to you.

I always wanted to do a comedy, but I wanted to pick the right one. But it came down to working with Steve Carell. I've wanted to work with him since I met him years ago as a kid.

What's nice with comedy is that you know it's working if it's funny.

Working with someone is the best way to get to know someone, especially if it's a creative endeavor.

I got a Twitter because some guy was pretending to be me.

I'm going to make a movie about 'Hey Girl.'

I try not to discriminate against genres.

The '70s just seemed dirty, honestly, and not in an interesting way. It's not the '80s. In fact, it's 10 less. I grew up in the '80s, so that's more of an interesting time to me.

It's not like I set out to be 'the indie guy.'

I feel like I think like a woman because I grew up with my mother and my sister, so I've just been programmed to think like a girl.

I love being Canadian. I think growing up in Canada gives you a world perspective that I certainly enjoy.

It's weird to have no control over something that you're involved in.

If the character is true, the movie will fall into place. Or at least that's what you hope.

If you do one good thing, that doesn't define you either. Being around the kids in the juvenile center, they were engaging, they made us laugh but they were there for doing something terrible.

I know that I'm with the person I'm supposed to be with.

I had to keep reminding myself in 'Blue Valentine' that I was actually making a film.

I don't think you can discriminate against budgets, you know? I'm an actor, I guess, so I'm just trying to play as many characters as I can. If there's a character I think I can play, and they're going to let me do it, I'll do it whether it's $10 or $1 million or more.

I think that you can sort of have your own personal journey and you know, you can just kind of apply that to whatever characters you're playing.

I never was that boy who loved gangster films, but when I was growing up, I was obsessed with the detective Dick Tracy. It was one of my favourite movies as a kid, and he really inspired me. I would have loved to be part of that golden age of Hollywood in the 1940s. It made me want to become an actor.