Tom Hanks Quotes

#1. I must say that I do wrestle with the amount of money I make, but at the end of the day what am I gonna say? I took less money so Rupert Murdoch could have more?

Tom Hanks

#2. 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

#3. Audiences crave something they've never seen before. That's what they want. They want to be dazzled. They want to go in either to have their expectations blown out of the water, or have no expectations and are dazzled by the decisions that we [filmmakers] made.

Tom Hanks

#4. A hero is somebody who voluntarily walks into the unknown.
Tom Hanks

Tom Hanks

#5. In your mid-30s, it's time to start playing guys of compromise. And as you get older, men of bitter compromise

Tom Hanks

#6. Growing up in northern California has had a big influence on my love and respect for the outdoors. When I lived in Oakland, we would think nothing of driving to Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz one day and then driving to the foothills of the Sierras the next day.

Tom Hanks

#7. I think it's better to feel good than to look good.

Tom Hanks

#8. 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

#9. 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

#10. 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

#11. 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

#12. But look, I was born in 1956, the peak year for births in US history. I think I'm very representative of many of the thought processes my generation have been through and, by and large, people of my age have had their imprint planted on the consciousness of western society for a long time.

Tom Hanks

#13. The more men I kill, the more far away from home I feel
Saving Private Ryan

Tom Hanks

#14. There was nothing to react to except wind and trees [in Cast Away]. It was like making a silent movie.

Tom Hanks

#15. Oprah Winfrey today you are surrounded by nothing but love.

Tom Hanks

#16. 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

#17. '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

#18. 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

#19. Repertory theater is all about being part of the whole, one of the many colors in this vast palette.

Tom Hanks

#20. As a boy Id often spend my days biking on riverbeds and arroyos and come home exhausted. I realize now how much I took for granted having the natural world so close at hand. It wasnt until I moved away, first to New York and then to Los Angeles, that I realized how much I missed the outdoors.

Tom Hanks

#21. If you look at romantic comedies as pieces of commerce, the audience is looking for wish fulfillment.

Tom Hanks

#22. It's just as hard ... staying happily married as it is doing movies.

Tom Hanks

#23. Childish, selfish, immature - that's right, I am. But do you know how much money I make for thinking this way?

Tom Hanks

#24. Once humankind has been some place and found it
entrancing, they always go back, I think in the history of the
human race, the moon has been the first place we've gone to and said,
'OK, we don't need to go back there again.

Tom Hanks

#25. 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

#26. It was a million tiny things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to be together ... and I knew it.

Tom Hanks

#27. But I also think all of the great stories in literature deal with loneliness. Sometimes it's by way of heartbreak, sometimes it's by way of injustice, sometimes it's by way of fate. There's an infinite number of ways to examine it.

Tom Hanks

#28. 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

#29. My kid could get a bad X-ray and I could get a call from the doctor saying I have something growing in my bum and that would change my perspective on everything instantaneously, on what is and what is not important.

Tom Hanks

#30. One thing that was amazing about World War II was that everybody signed up for the duration plus six months. Fliers got to leave combat after 25 missions, or 35 missions, but other than that, you were in it. You were part of the great effort, until, oh boy, six months after it was over.

Tom Hanks

#31. 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

#32. Dear God, thank you for my life. I forgot how big and wonderful it is.

Tom Hanks

#33. If things were easy to find, they wouldn't be worth finding.

Tom Hanks

#34. Even the simplest choice can make a jaw-dropping difference in our world.

Tom Hanks

#35. 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

#36. Prior to Saving Private Ryan I never worked with men. I was always working with some babe, and it was always about falling in love, and it just got turned around. I'm not looking for any particular kind of story. I wait until it comes across my desk.

Tom Hanks

#37. I come from the school of That Horse is Not Dead.

Tom Hanks

#38. 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

#39. 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

#40. 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

#41. I just know that every man I kill the farther away from home I feel.

Tom Hanks

#42. 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

#43. 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

#44. If not for John Adams leading a revolution against Great Britain ... This would be the BAFTAs.

Tom Hanks

#45. Houston, we have a problem.

Tom Hanks

#46. 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

#47. 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

#48. Mass-market movies have become about one thing. They kind of declare themselves right off the bat ... But when I go to see (a film), I want to be surprised. I want to see something I never expected. And when you get that, it should be celebrated.

Tom Hanks

#49. The only way you can truly control how you are seen is by being honest all the time.

Tom Hanks

#50. 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

#51. An animatic is a process where every voice and every sound effect is added to rough animated drawings and it lasts exactly as long as the final movie. So you actually get to go into a screening room with the rest of the cast and you get to see it all at the same time.

Tom Hanks

#52. There isn't any great mystery about me. What I do is glamorous and has an awful lot of white-hot attention placed on it. But the actual work requires the same discipline and passion as any job you love doing, be it as a very good pipe fitter or a highly creative artist.

Tom Hanks

#53. Tweeting is like sending out cool telegrams to your friends once a week.

Tom Hanks

#54. Every job requires a certain riding of a horse.

Tom Hanks

#55. May you live as long as you want and not want as long as you live.

Tom Hanks

#56. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. It's the hard that makes it great.

Tom Hanks

#57. 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

#58. 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

#59. I have gone through so many examinations of what a hero is, between the World War II stuff and the astronaut stuff.

Tom Hanks

#60. 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

#61. Never give up because you never know what the tide will bring in the next day.

Tom Hanks

#62. 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

#63. If they could offer up a way to go to the moon that wouldn't kill you, I'd sign up.

Tom Hanks

#64. 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

#65. We are all God's animated cartoons.

Tom Hanks

#66. As a young man, even if I was going to see a play or a film by myself, I didn't feel like I was alone. There was something that was unfolding up there that brought me into it. And I recognised that. For those two hours, it made me feel like I belonged to something really good.

Tom Hanks

#67. I know what I have to do now, I've got to keep breathing because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?

Tom Hanks

#68. 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

#69. The desert, when the sun comes up ... I couldn't tell where heaven stopped and the Earth began.

Tom Hanks

#70. 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

#71. 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

#72. It just so happens that my body type and my lifestyle gives me a preclusion for high blood sugars.

Tom Hanks

#73. E-mail is far more convenient than the telephone, as far as I'm concerned. I would throw my phone away if I could get away with it.

Tom Hanks

#74. Saying no to something is actually much more powerful than saying yes.

Tom Hanks

#75. Making a film is to make sure that everybody looks forward to coming to work.

Tom Hanks

#76. My job has always been to hold a mirror up to nature.

Tom Hanks

#77. There was a period of time in Los Angeles when I wondered if I was just going to lose everything.

Tom Hanks

#78. The prejudice surrounding AIDS exacts a social death which precedes the actual physical one.

Tom Hanks

#79. 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

#80. Believing is seeing and seeing is believing.

Tom Hanks

#81. 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

#82. Larger-than-life characters make up about .01 percent of the world's population.

Tom Hanks

#83. Actors with political views are a dime a dozen.

Tom Hanks

#84. What we're doing with Band of Brothers is trying to put it into human terms, so it is not just a flickering, black and white myth on a screen, it is a resonant story. I want the audience to recognize themselves in these men. They're not just mythic heroes.

Tom Hanks

#85. I had to say no to 'Fantasy Island' back when I was doing 'Bosom Buddies.'

Tom Hanks

#86. 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

#87. Mama always had a way of explaining things so I could understand them.

Tom Hanks

#88. 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

#89. Are you crying? There's no crying. There's no crying in baseball.

Tom Hanks

#90. 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

#91. You don't necessarily go in to talk to the person to try to find some secret key to the lock.

Tom Hanks

#92. 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

#93. 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

#94. 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

#95. As long as you as an individual ... can convince yourself that in order to move forward as best you can you have to be optimistic, you can be described as 'one of the faithful,' one of those people who can say, 'Well, look, something's going to happen! Let's just keep trying. Let's not give up.

Tom Hanks

#96. 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

#97. I understand the concept of optimism. But I think with me what you get is a lack of cynicism.

Tom Hanks

#98. If you're funny, if there's something that makes you laugh, then every day's going to be okay.

Tom Hanks

#99. Movie-making is telling a story with the best technology at your disposal.

Tom Hanks

#100. 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