Jake Gyllenhaal Quotes

Prancing around on stage is not the entire purpose of my life.

I felt for a long time that this is what I want to do so I'm happy at this point to just take my time and work on projects that I feel strongly about, and the rest of the time just live my life.

I've been fortunate that I can be selective enough to do acting when it's really furthering what I want to do with my life.

Now is the one time in my life I can be 100% selfish. I'm not married; I don't have kids; I can focus on my career.

I just don't want to be rapping forever. I love it, but sometimes you got goals for yourself.

I'd like to make as much art as I possibly can before I die, so I'm working on a few things.

I have passed on on a lot of roles. I purely and simply do what I like.

You have to know what you want out of your work or out of your life.

If I make two movies my entire life, and they're two movies that - whether they make a lot of money or two people go to see them - they speak of me, then I consider them incredibly successful. I don't need to be Steven Spielberg.

Now that I'm staring down the barrel of the last act of my life, I'm less excited about control and solo effort, and I resent the way the business aspects interfere with my space for creative writing.

I want to be able to say, 'you think you're odd, I'm even odder and I made it - you can too!' I want to direct, do more with 'The Dance Scene,' sign artists and just provide opportunities. I'm just getting started and having the time of my life!

I don't want to spend my life doing jobs that I don't care about.

I love filmmaking, but I decided to go to drama school because I thought that when I'm 60 and looking back on my life, if acting hadn't been a part of it, I would hate myself.

One thing young people have to always keep in mind when deciding what they want to do with their lives is, is it fun? Is it something that I'm interested in? Is it something I enjoy?

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.

I'll spend the rest of my life chasing that feeling I had on 'The Grey,' because I think we're all aware that, first and foremost, we were having an adventure, and we were also making this movie at the same time.

There have been multitudes of times in my career where I could have taken an easier road or a more commercial path, and I've been just like, 'That's not gonna make me happy.'

Everything I do is part of my passion. I do the things I like to do. It's sort of a bigger version of having more than one hobby. I love to play piano, sing, and act. I love to do all those things.

Like my mother, I was always saying, 'I'll fix my life one day.' It became clear when I saw her die without fulfilling her dreams that my time was now or maybe never.

I read a quote by James Dean when I was 17; he said, 'I'd rather starve than do a whole bunch of work that I don't care about.' The older I got, the more I understood what he was saying. If I want to do a whole lot of work that I don't care about, then I would probably be working in a law office somewhere.

I never got tired of Tom and Jerry, but I did have a dream of doing more with my life than making cartoons.

I don't want to spend the rest of my life giving speeches.

It is not my wish to lounge about the college and fatten on a fellowship all my days. I am always trying to look upon a college life as a medium not an end.

I know I have the ability to do so much more than just stand in front of the camera the rest of my life.

I worked in an insurance office for six years, and it was there that I just woke up one day and realised there was something massively lacking in my life, and a non-contributory pension and a subsidised canteen could not fill it.