Jim Gaffigan Quotes

While you have people who are actually fronting for your needs and wants, sometimes your needs and wants may not be right for you. The people around you are just trying to keep their jobs.

You can get totally messed up trying to please everyone with what you do, but ultimately, you have to please yourself.

Writing can be a tough gig. Whenever you do something in which you put yourself out there - if that becomes the focus of your life, you miss the point of living. You've really got to get the grounding of family and the things that are important in your life and make that your focus.

Well, you know, when people say stuff about you, it's always really flattering. But does it mean anything to me? It's not really real to me; there's no reality to it.

It's not about, 'Let me play as long as I can so I don't have to grow up.' It's about, 'Let me play as long as I enjoy it,' and when it's time to step away, I can step away gracefully even if I'm still good enough to keep playing, because I'm ready for that next phase.

When you're a working actor and you're happy to be one, you can't focus all your energy on acting because you will go crazy. You have to focus as much energy as you can away from yourself.

I spent a lot of my 20s just trying to make other people happy, rather than trying to figure out if doing that made me happy.

Working, I can be my truest self. I don't know how healthy that is.

You have to have something in your life that's more important than the work. People don't really like to admit that. They say, 'Oh, my work is my most important thing.'

As I get older, I'm learning how to just play hard.

You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.

People are effective because they say 'no,' because they say, 'this isn't for me.'

I know people are saying they like you. I'm not being insulted or pushed around or anything. People are coming up because they like me. Nevertheless, I can't be everybody's...none of us can. I hate saying no to people.

I don't really read that much stuff about myself anyways, because I feel as though you then develop this mind-set of just making sure other people would approve of your decisions.

That's something I have to work on: to separate what really matters, to conserve energy by not worrying about what other people think.

I am fortunate to have a very helpful team that enables me to spend time doing things that are important but not necessarily urgent. People who have no such team need to also make these larger decisions so that they can cheerfully say No to that which is urgent but not important.

A woman who does not know herself has no choice other than to live with other people’s evaluations. But no one can adapt perfectly to public opinion. And herein lies the source of their destruction.

Pieces. A bit for someone here. A bit there. And sometimes they don't add up to anything whole. But you are so busy dancing. Delivering. You don't have time to notice. Or are afraid to notice. And then one day you have to look. And it's true. All of your pieces fill up other people's holes. But they don't fill your own.

Before you do anything, think. If you do something to try and impress someone, to be loved, accepted or even to get someone's attention, stop and think. So many people are busy trying to create an image, they die in the process.

Who knows, maybe I'm just a stubborn jerk? Maybe the other people who do stuff they don't want to do, maybe they're doing the right thing. Who am I to say? I'm just doing my thing and being myself, and I've been given the incredible, fortunate opportunity to play roles that I frickin' care about and enjoy playing. And it might not last forever. That's okay. That's what it is.

Discover yourself, otherwise you have to depend on other people's opinions who don't know themselves.

Instead of always asking how to get others to approve of you... learn to ask: What do I really want, the applause of the crowds or to quietly have my own life?

There is just something that people taught me in general for self-care, would just be to spend some time alone and to protect yourself. Learning to say no is something that helps in that, and what you're comfortable with and what you're not comfortable with, and finding the line. That's it. Otherwise it's just going to be really hard.

You’ve gotta keep control of your time, and you can’t unless you say no. You can’t let people set your agenda in life.

You'll never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking what sort of impression you make.