1- “Making a film is to make sure that everybody looks forward to coming to work.” -Tom Hanks
2- “There was a period of time in Los Angeles when I wondered if I was just going to lose everything.” -Tom Hanks
3- “When you’re on the open sea and you drop 10, 12 feet and your stomach goes up around your neck – that’s when you have problems.” -Tom Hanks
4- “But the battles against loneliness that I fought when I was 16 are very different from those I fought when I was 27, and those are very different from the ones I fight at 44.” -Tom Hanks
5- “The filmmakers aren’t running the studios anymore. Sometimes people who like films are making them, but by and large, they have to go report quarterly earnings and all that stuff. The competition is so huge that it’s very hard to get people to show up to see any movie in the theater, much less an original one that isn’t a version of something else they saw.” -Tom Hanks
6- “My job has always been to hold a mirror up to nature.” -Tom Hanks
7- “All the kids are gone. It’s the greatest thing that has ever happened to Mr. and Mrs. Tom Hanks. I’ll tell you that right now. Second greatest after having the kids in the first place. When they go, holy smoke, it’s like you’re dating again. It’s fantastic. Also, we were doing an awful lot of work.” -Tom Hanks
8- “The year I was born, 1956, was the peak year for babies being born, and there are more people essentially our age than anybody else. We could crush these new generations if we decided too.” -Tom Hanks
9- “I don’t think anybody’s mind’s gonna be changed.” -Tom Hanks
10- “There is something basic about protecting land by taking it off the market. People should be able to enjoy where they live while at the same time protect the plants and animals around them.” -Tom Hanks
11- “In the early days you have a tendency to intellectualize, but you’re really just trying to sound smart and score with the chicks.” -Tom Hanks
12- “Don’t you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address. On the other hand, this not knowing has its charms.” -Tom Hanks
13- “I’ve worked with people who are much further to the left than I am and much further to the right than I am. At the end of the day, who gives a… Good for you. This is America. Vote your conscience.” -Tom Hanks
14- “Some people are cowards… I think by and large a third of people are villains, a third are cowards, and a third are heroes. Now, a villain and a coward can choose to be a hero, but they’ve got to make that choice.” -Tom Hanks
15- “I’ve been doing a pale imitation of Bill Murray for most of my career.” -Tom Hanks
16- “At the end of the day it’s got to be a good movie, it’s got to be a funny movie, and it’s got to make people think, ‘Hey, I couldn’t have spent my time any better.'” -Tom Hanks
17- “I have a woman who teaches me what love is every day. Maybe that sentiment is possible to fake, but for me it’s really true.” -Tom Hanks
18- “I do not want to admit to the world that I can be a bad person. It is just that I don’t want anyone to have false expectations. Moviemaking is a harsh, volatile business, and unless you can be ruthless, too, there’s a good chance that you are going to disappear off the scene pretty quickly.” -Tom Hanks
19- “I’m not saying I’m not bummed if a movie doesn’t do well, but that isn’t the final analysis of whether it’s any good.” -Tom Hanks
20- “I’m not interested in doing something edgy with a capital E just so everyone knows, ‘Oh, OK, now he’s showing us he can do edgy.'” -Tom Hanks
21- “Everyone says, “You have to work at relationships.” Sometimes you’ve got to work, but if you’re working 60 percent of the time and only enjoying it 40 percent…” -Tom Hanks
22- “There’s a difference between solitude and loneliness. I can understand the concept of being a monk for a while.” -Tom Hanks
23- “Work in the theater is more fun than fun.” -Tom Hanks
24- “Help and you will abolish apathy-the void that is so quickly filled by ignorance and evil.” -Tom Hanks
25- “Most people want to be able to go off and deal with their day – stop in here, run errands there – and when you can’t do that, going out becomes a chore.” -Tom Hanks
26- “If they could offer up a way to go to the moon that wouldn’t kill you, I’d sign up.” -Tom Hanks
27- I know how the Academy Awards works: It’s a card game, and I’m in the toss-up category.” -Tom Hanks
28- “I don’t ask for much. I don’t ask to be rich, and I don’t ask to be famous, and I don’t ask to play center field for the New York Yankees. I just want to get married and have a wife, and a house, and I want to have a kid, and I want to go see him be a tooth in the school play!” -Tom Hanks
29- “A lot of people would flee from what they think is award-show cheesiness, and I don’t. I often joke that my speeches are very personal moments that play themselves out in front of billions of people.” -Tom Hanks
30- “I’m not looking for anything. If you start looking for something specific, then you take providence right out of it. You can’t completely control it. Otherwise you’d make the same kind of movie over and over again, which some people say I’ve done.” -Tom Hanks
31- “I hope my kids understand that they’re not operating in a normal world. And yet there are principles they have to adhere to that are normal – like decency, choosing between right and wrong, and honesty. That’s important stuff, whether you’re flying first-class or not.” -Tom Hanks
32- “The truth is that everyone pays attention to who’s number one at the box office. And none of it matters, because the only thing that really exists is the connection the audience has with a movie.” -Tom Hanks
33- “I would like to think I’ve reflected the audience’s lives somehow, though it’s in this big, false, glamorous arena of movies. I hope people see themselves somehow up on the screen.” -Tom Hanks
34- “I love my family and I love my kids, but when the moments come, it’s not as though you can just substitute your own life with what you’re doing on film. You have to go to some other place where it’s bigger than your own life.” -Tom Hanks
35- “I have faith that a script is going to hit me like a ton of bricks, and when that happens, it’s undeniable that I should choose the role.” -Tom Hanks
36- “Directing is a constant test of your communicative powers. You’re constantly trying to explain people your vision of what you want and steer these tiny little details into a cohesive thing.” -Tom Hanks
37- “We’re part of a greater humanity and we can actually affect the world by the choices we make once we leave the theater.” -Tom Hanks
38- “It’s always a combination of physics and poetry that I find inspiring. It’s hard to wrap your head around things like the Hubble scope.” -Tom Hanks
39- “But television, when I was doing it, was all about scoring. You had to make these jokes bang, do whatever you could to make the material really pop. And if it didn’t, there was something wrong with the material, or with you.” -Tom Hanks
40- “Mama always had a way of explaining things so I could understand them.” -Tom Hanks
41- “Even the simplest choice can make a jaw-dropping difference in our world.” -Tom Hanks
42- “The power of the individual is as powerful as the universe is infinite.” -Tom Hanks
43- “Everybody has something that chews them up and, for me, that thing was always loneliness. The cinema has the power to make you not feel lonely, even when you are.” -Tom Hanks
44- “When I was growing up, everybody in charge, my parents and teachers, had all survived the war, and they talked about the war like it was the Kraken – you know, this huge beast that roamed the earth during their formative years.” -Tom Hanks
45- “And then it was like, wait, you can go to college and study theater? And act in plays? This is almost a racket, you know. And then when the opportunity came along to do it professionally, I thought I’d won the lottery.” -Tom Hanks
46- “The pleasure of working with somebody who’s an actor is they don’t waste time with stuff that doesn’t matter.” -Tom Hanks
47- “We are all God’s animated cartoons.” -Tom Hanks
48- “I don’t cause riots, but I do cause confusion. People freeze when they spot me.” -Tom Hanks
49- “You have to adhere to a philosophy that the life unexamined is not worth living, because otherwise you’re just living from day to day and you don’t have any real sense of yourself or where you are.” -Tom Hanks
50- “I’m not a smart man, but I know what love is.” -Tom Hanks
51- Reading a script is usually as exciting as reading a boilerplate legal document, so when you read one that makes you feel as if you’re seeing the movie, you know it’s something different.” -Tom Hanks
52- Let’s not pretend there isn’t a huge industry driven by the choices made by editors and writers who decide what a story is. -Tom Hanks
53- I understand the concept of optimism. But I think with me what you get is a lack of cynicism. -Tom Hanks
54- There’s such an advantage to being involved in the day-to-day details of each other’s lives. It’s a marvelous fabric to exist in. -Tom Hanks
55- “People ask me all the time, “What kind of father are you?” I won’t know until my kids are grown.” -Tom Hanks
56- “My work is really a blast. When it stops being a blast, then it ain’t no fun no more!” -Tom Hanks
57- “It was a million tiny little things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to be together… and I knew it.” -Tom Hanks
58- “If I stopped having passion, I’d be done.” -Tom Hanks
59- “If you’re funny, if there’s something that makes you laugh, then every day’s going to be okay.” -Tom Hanks
60- “I was never intimidated by change. I was like an army brat who had lived all around the world.” -Tom Hanks
61- “There’s no substitute for a great love who says, ‘No matter what’s wrong with you, you’re welcome at this table.'”
62- “If you look at romantic comedies as pieces of commerce, the audience is looking for wish fulfillment.” -Tom Hanks
63- “Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” -Tom Hanks
64- “But actors with political views are a dime a dozen.” -Tom Hanks
65- “If things were easy to find, they wouldn’t be worth finding.” -Tom Hanks
66- “I went to college because I didn’t have anywhere else to go and it was a fabulous hang. And while I was there I was exposed to this world that I didn’t know was possible.” -Tom Hanks
67- “The cinema has the power to make you not feel lonely, even when you are.” -Tom Hanks
68- “That’s what’s nice about directing a film and having it done: There’s nothing more I can do about it. It’s done. That’s it. All I can do is let it go and hope that people are kind to it.” -Tom Hanks
69- “Dear God, thank you for my life. I forgot how big and wonderful it is.” -Tom Hanks
70- “My favorite traditional Christmas movie that I like to watch is All Quiet on the Western Front. It’s just not December without that movie in my house.” -Tom Hanks
71- “Saying no to something is actually much more powerful than saying yes.” -Tom Hanks
72- “The “Toy Story” films accomplish what timeless classics aim for – innocent characters who face an endless trail of adventures.” -Tom Hanks
73- “A hero is somebody who voluntarily walks into the unknown.” -Tom Hanks
74- “I have high blood sugars, and Type 2 diabetes is not going to kill me. But I just have to eat right, and exercise, and lose weight, and watch what I eat, and I will be fine for the rest of my life.” -Tom Hanks
75- “I think it’s better to feel good than to look good.” -Tom Hanks
76- “It’s difficult to say no sometimes. I often hear, “They’ll really take care of you,” or “Someone else is going to take the role if you don’t play it.” Some of the best advice I ever received was to always ask myself: Am I going to kill myself if somebody else takes this role? The answer is almost always no.” -Tom Hanks
77- “Never give up because you never know what the tide will bring in the next day.” -Tom Hanks
78- “Every job requires a certain riding of a horse.” -Tom Hanks
79- “We are still in the position of waking up and having a choice. Do I make the world better today somehow, or do I not bother?” -Tom Hanks
80- “Larger-than-life characters make up about .01 percent of the world’s population.” -Tom Hanks
81- “The only way you can truly control how you are seen is by being honest all the time.” -Tom Hanks
82- “Hold the mirror up to nature. Human behavior is worthy of examination and celebration.” -Tom Hanks
83- “If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. It’s the hard that makes it great.” -Tom Hanks
84- “Larry Crowne’ is about as bummed out a human being as one can be when he loses his job. What he is able to enjoy is something that may not be available to everybody. But it’s about the value of being willing to get and willing to give good advice.” -Tom Hanks
85- “Acting still rings my bell as much as it did in high school. Plus, I can now indulge my interests as a producer as well. My work is more fun than fun but, best of all, it’s still very scary. You are always walking some kind of high wire.” -Tom Hanks
86- “My wife keeps on telling me my worst fault is that I keep things to myself and appear relaxed. But I am really in a room in my own head and not hearing a thing anyone is saying.” -Tom Hanks
87- “The nature of motion capture is only going to work for certain films. It’s not going to put any other type of movies out of business.” -Tom Hanks
88- “I am a lay historian by nature. I seek out an empirical reflection of what truth is. I sort of want dates and motivations and I want the whole story. But I’ve always felt, unconsciously, that all human history is that connection from person to person to person, event to event to event, and from idea to idea.” -Tom Hanks
89- “I had to say no to ‘Fantasy Island’ back when I was doing ‘Bosom Buddies.'” -Tom Hanks
90- “I don’t parade my family out for display, which is the way it will stay. Yet I have a reputation for being cooperative with the press. That’s because when I do give an interview, I’m willing to tell the truth about what I do for a living and how goofy it is sometimes – and how volatile it can also be.” -Tom Hanks
91- “I think I’m lucky that I had kids as spread out as much as I did, ’cause my son, my oldest, was born when I was 21. And my youngest is 15 now. He was born when I was 40, you know?” -Tom Hanks
92- “In the creative process you come to loggerheads and you just have to keep the process moving forward, even if that requires jumping on a plane and flying to London. It’s a good thing it’s fun, otherwise it would be too much work.” -Tom Hanks
93- “Oprah Winfrey today you are surrounded by nothing but love.” -Tom Hanks
94- “Are you crying? There’s no crying. There’s no crying in baseball.” -Tom Hanks
95- “It just so happens that my body type and my lifestyle gives me a preclusion for high blood sugars.” -Tom Hanks
96- “Being politically correct means always having to say you’re sorry. Believe me, the power and pleasure and the emotion of this moment is a constant speed of light.” -Tom Hanks
97- “There was nothing to react to except wind and trees [in Cast Away]. It was like making a silent movie.” -Tom Hanks
98- “I love what I do for a living, it’s the greatest job in the world, but you have to survive an awful lot of attention that you don’t truly deserve and you have to live up to your professional responsibilities and I’m always trying to balance that with what is really important.” -Tom Hanks
99- “I know the Pope is opposed to the use of condoms. All I can say is, I am a spiritual man and I’ve been happily married for 21 years. I don’t even know what a condom is anymore.” -Tom Hanks
100- “No journalist has ever been in my house and no photographs have ever been taken of where I live. I don’t parade my family out for display, which is the way it will stay.” -Tom Hanks
101- “I want to have a good time myself. I don’t want to dread going to work no matter what the gig is. I think, selfishly, I will make sure that I have a good time; how about that?” -Tom Hanks
102- “If I was to direct Ron Howard, I guarantee you, I would put him through a living hell every day. I would demand so much of him. We wouldn’t quit until he leaves the set crying. Weeping! Spent!” -Tom Hanks
103- “It was incredibly cheesy set with torches [TV’s Survivor] – it looked like the lobby of the Enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland. And here as some guy pulling names out of a coconut, and I said, ‘This is the thing that has made American mass media stop in their tracks?” -Tom Hanks
104- “My doctor said, ‘If you can weigh what you weighed in high school, you’ll essentially be healthy and not have Type 2 diabetes.’ Well, I’m gonna have Type 2 diabetes, because there is no way I can weigh as much as I did in high school.” -Tom Hanks
105- “Yeah! I got type-two diabetes! I’m sure there’s going to be some media scandal now, saying I got it because I gained and lost weight for movie parts or something – but I doubt that.” -Tom Hanks
106- “It’s just as hard staying happily married as it is doing movies.” -Tom Hanks
107- “Houston, we have a problem.” -Tom Hanks
108- “I’m lucky enough to be able to make only movies I’m interested in seeing. That has to be an instinctive thrust. The audience knows when you’re faking it. They can hang any kind of moniker they want on me.” -Tom Hanks
109- “I always wanted to play Lestrade of Scotland Yard ’cause he’s a buffoon that gets to wear a uniform. I thought that would be fun.” -Tom Hanks
110- “For some people, I will be Forrest Gump for the rest of my life. But that’s OK; that’s a good thing.” -Tom Hanks
111- “I did a ‘Love Boat!’ And based on my trip on the ‘Love Boat,’ I said, ‘I’d just as soon not do ‘Fantasy Island.” -Tom Hanks
112- “The nature of the movies is different than it was five years ago, and they’re all driven by the possibilities of CGI, which means you can make anything happen on screen that you can possibly desire.” -Tom Hanks
113- “I have gone through so many examinations of what a hero is, between the World War II stuff and the astronaut stuff.” -Tom Hanks
114- “I just know that every man I kill the farther away from home I feel.” -Tom Hanks
115- “This is what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination.” -Tom Hanks
116- “You cannot look up at the night sky on the Planet Earth and not wonder what it’s like to be up there amongst the stars. And I always look up at the moon and see it as the single most romantic place within the cosmos.” -Tom Hanks
117- “I don’t follow football, I just love the name Aston Villa. Here in England you have other footballing entities like Manchester and Arsenal and Chelsea.” -Tom Hanks
118- “Even if a story has nothing to do with my life, if I can recognise something of myself in the character and think, ‘Oh yeah, that’s what I’d do…’ yeah, that’s what I look for.” -Tom Hanks
119- “Tweeting is like sending out cool telegrams to your friends once a week.” -Tom Hanks
120- “The prejudice surrounding AIDS exacts a social death which precedes the actual physical one.” -Tom Hanks
121- “If you can feel like a good man in your 40s, you can feel like a better man in your 50s, a Superman in your 60s, and maybe a Spider-Man in your 70s.” -Tom Hanks
122- “If you have to have a job in this world, a high-priced movie star is a pretty good gig.” -Tom Hanks
123- “The desert, when the sun comes up… I couldn’t tell where heaven stopped and the Earth began.” -Tom Hanks
124- “If I have no connection with the character, then it’s all fake – it’s just blah, blah, blah.” -Tom Hanks
125- “Eating everything you want is not that much fun. When you live a life with no boundaries, there’s less joy. If you can eat anything you want to, what’s the fun in eating anything you want to?” -Tom Hanks
126- “The same way that I know that I’ll never do a movie as good or as celebrated as ‘Forrest Gump,’ I know that I’ll never do a movie as bad as ‘Bonfire of the Vanities.'” -Tom Hanks
127- “In your mid-30s, it’s time to start playing guys of compromise. And as you get older, men of bitter compromise.” -Tom Hanks
128- “And I’m not apolitical – I’m very specific in my politics. But a lot of the time it’s nobody’s business unless you’re over at my house having dinner.” -Tom Hanks
129- “I will entertain anything; it doesn’t matter. You know, it’s not obviously about the price, it’s not about who, it’s kind of about when and what. It’s material, that’s all.” -Tom Hanks
130- “I come from the school of That Horse is Not Dead.” -Tom Hanks
131- “Without question, we make choices – and those choices have consequences. So can you control your own destiny? To a degree, certainly. Must you have faith in serendipity? Without question, you’d better. Otherwise you’re foolish.” -Tom Hanks
132- “I’ve made over 20 movies, and 5 of them are good.” -Tom Hanks
133- “It’s not a mid-life crisis. It’s a mid-life disaster. A mid-life crisis is when you wake up with everything and you go “I have everything but I’m still unhappy.”” -Tom Hanks
134- “I would not want to live in a country that would have me as a leader in any sort of political bent.” -Tom Hanks
135- “My wife and I, we met making a movie. This is not just our job, it’s our life. It’s what we do naturally whether we’re working together or not.” -Tom Hanks
136- “‘Forrest Gump’ was great, it was fabulous. It lasted much longer than anybody thought, and brought me a degree of attention that no human being on the face of the planet deserves.” -Tom Hanks
137- “College isn’t necessary for everybody and it’s only from what you put into it what you go there for.” -Tom Hanks
138- “From now on we live in a world where man has walked on the Moon. It’s not a miracle; we just decided to go.” -Tom Hanks
139- “You don’t necessarily go in to talk to the person to try to find some secret key to the lock.” -Tom Hanks
140- “Movie-making is telling a story with the best technology at your disposal.” -Tom Hanks
141- “I think 80 percent of the population are really great, caring people who will help you and tell you the truth. That’s just the way it is. And I think 20 percent of the population are crooks and liars. It’s just a fact.” -Tom Hanks
142- “I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?” -Tom Hanks
143- “Help, and you will make a huge impact in the life of the street, the town, the country and our planet. If only one out of four of each one hundred of you choose to help on any given day, in any given cause, incredible things will happen in the world you live in.” -Tom Hanks
144- “All directors should have to act and all actors should have to direct, so that they can understand all these key things that come into play with whether you can meet your day.” -Tom Hanks
145- “Believing is seeing and seeing is believing.” -Tom Hanks
146- “When you try to bring a story to life, it starts in your head and you see possibilities for it, but it’s just one damn thing after another.” -Tom Hanks
147- “Repertory theater is all about being part of the whole, one of the many colors in this vast palette.” -Tom Hanks
148- “As an actor I am always waiting for my luck to run out.” -Tom Hanks
149- “Shake it off and move on.” -Tom Hanks
150- “I try not to lie to people – the only way to control the way you’re perceived is to tell the truth.” -Tom Hanks
151- “The reason most of us go to the movies is to be involved in someone else’s moral dilemma.” -Tom Hanks
152- “I view my wife as my lover, and we have a bond that goes beyond words like wife or girlfriend or mother.” -Tom Hanks
153- “In the 1998 Oscars, I found myself in the bathroom in a stall, next to Tom Selleck. So I leaned over and I said ‘looks like we’re a couple of peeing Toms.’ His angry silence is something I’ll never forget.” -Tom Hanks
154- “Human beings do things for a reason, even if sometimes it’s the wrong reason.” -Tom Hanks
155- “Some people go to bed at night thinking, ‘That was a good day.’ I am one of those who worries and asks, ‘How did I screw up today?'” -Tom Hanks
156- “Mama always said, dying was a part of life. I sure wish it wasn’t.” -Tom Hanks
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