Tom Hanks Quotes

There's a little bit of me in everybody that I play.

Everybody else is going to react differently to the film [Aquarius], but what I love about it is that both men and women are going to react to it because they will find themselves represented.

Ultimately the social change has to come from the people who make the movies, so the people who make the movies have to look at the landscape and say to themselves, "Well, you know, these things are changing, and I'm okay with their having changed, and I think it's okay to start reflecting those changes through the movies we make."

What is the truth is that every one of my films is a film that I'd love to go see, and I think that's very important because I always think it's a mistake to make movies for other people, or to make them for a demographic, or try to second guess an audience.

I think there's a bit of me in every character. Basically it just depends on what happens with the character.

Truth to tell, the longer I live, the more I'm tempted to think that the only moderately worthwhile people in the world are you and I.

When I leave the theater I can always hear people talking about the character, and everyone always says, "You know, I know someone like her." And I always think, Everyone knows someone like the characters; nobody is like the character. Nobody wants to admit that they are a little bit like that.

I'm not sure what I am anymore... Sometimes I think I'm nothing but what other people have done to me―a big collection of brainwashing, surgeries, and cures... That, and all the mistakes I've made. All the people I've disappointed.

Usually the intention of the artistic effect is too sophisticated for most people to understand, sort of like a joke that they don't get so they don't think it's funny.

Sometimes I am still surprised that I'm a model and that people think I'm good-looking. I've gone through a lot of different phases on what I do and why I do it - morally and ethically. I've tortured myself about it, especially in dealing with success and money. I just had to learn to look at it as a job, as opposed to identifying myself as a model and thinking of myself as a part of this industry. I just thought, Okay, this is an opportunity to learn and see and meet people. Still, I am a Scorpio and I'm quite competitive.

Real theology is always rather shocking to people who already think they know what they think. I'm still shocked myself.

The audience doesn't come to see you, they come to see themselves.

Forgive everybody for everything. Just forgive and start - most of us can't start with ourselves. We have to forgive the people we think did things to us. So that's fine. Start there - wherever. Start with the dog who peed on the rug. I don't care where you start, just do it.

People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness. They always have the power to think, and to think about their thinking, and to think about thinking about their thinking, which the goddamn dolphin, as far as we know, can't do. Therefore they have much greater ability to change themselves than any other animal has.

I think television is doing a better job than films in terms of representing people, but television is still not diverse.

We've lost our way, we have lost our centeredness. We don't have the time, literally, to think during the day. To listen to ourselves think. To think about where we are going, who we are, what's important. I would bet most people don't have thirty minutes in a day where they can just sit down and think. Or maybe they don't have to be sitting, they can be walking.

I am a bit of a goody-goody. Not that there aren't times when I think, I was kind of an (ass) today. I work in a world in which people are really catered to; someone will come up to me and say, "Is it OK if this person's makeup is done before yours for the premiere?"

I never thought about being the first black actor to win, even though everybody else talked about that. If I stop to think as a black actor, people will see me differently. If I play as a black actor, people will only see that. I think my key was to perform as an actor, not as a black actor. And after winning the Cesar, I was an actor with a Cesar. there are many more adjectives to describe who I am. I'm not only black.

People with humility don't think less of themselves, they just think of themselves less.

When you coach and teach leadership, most people think about them. It's like you're the leader and how do you influence them. Clearly, leaders do take their followers, their flock, their enterprise, their business - whatever - hopefully to a better place. But I think the foundation of what makes really great leaders is they lead themselves, and they're conscious about knowing themselves and coaching and leading themselves in a very profound way. The simplest of us talk to ourselves. The question is, "Do we really lead ourselves?"

Even though Star Wars is easily read as feminist for its time - and even for now, with Princess Leia's role - people wouldn't make a movie like that in 2016, where the guys are mostly the tough ones, and the women aren't in positions of authority.

I think when you're writing from your own life, it's hard because you realize that people have their own assessment of how they look, and they don't know how you will describe them.

I like working with family and friends and people I admire. All my movies are filled with family members of some capacity. I think it means more when you have a personal relationship with someone.

I think people can benefit tremendously from really asking why they're doing certain things.

Different things work for different people. One thing I've realized, though, is that the work that I've done on myself outside of my work as an actress has really allowed me to open up my mind. I think I understand my emotional state and my complexities now in a much clearer way, and I can put them to rest in a way that there's almost a catharsis that happens through the work, where I can do it and then find myself again.