Jennifer Garner quotes: on growing up country, how acting compares to regular jobs, how much money drives her, the low-down on her ex, and more.
“Your happiness is your own responsibility.”
“You just decide on your own.”
“Don’t let yourself be so isolated with whatever it is you’re scared about. Find some way to reach out, whether it’s to somebody online, whether it’s one friend you feel like you can trust; hopefully it’ll be your parents and you can lean on them.”
“It’s not a bad thing, is it, to be strong in some ways and fragile and vulnerable in others?”
“I think all of us want to feel something that we’ve forgotten or turned our backs on because maybe we didn’t realize how much we were leaving behind. We need to remember what used to be good. If we don’t, we won’t recognize it even if it hits us between the eyes.”
“We need to be talking about how to educate and protect our young women and how women can do a better job of standing together. Women need to be there for each other so that we’re more of a force. When you are siphoned off… all by yourself… you’re not that scary. Except for me. I am pretty scary.”
“Beauty comes from a life well-lived. If you’ve lived well, your smile lines are in the right places, and your frown lines aren’t too bad. What more do you need?”
“My family has always been unabashedly proud and happy for me, but my job is not the focal point of our family.”
“My parents started with very little and were the only ones in their families to graduate from college. As parents, they focused on education, but did not stop at academics. They made sure that we knew music, saw art and theatre, and traveled – even though it meant budgeting like crazy.”
“My mother is a big believer in being responsible for your own happiness. That’s probably what I quote from her and live by the most. She always talked about finding joy in small moments and insisted that we stop and take in the beauty of an ordinary day.”
“My mom is a hard worker. She puts her head down and she gets it done. And she finds a way to have fun.”
“I am the model middle child. I am patient and I like to take care of everyone. Being called nice is a compliment. It’s not a boring way to describe me.”
“I try to eat in a way that makes me feel good. If that means a little bite of chocolate I do that, but I try not to use food as a reward for myself.”
“I am not pregnant, but I’ve had three kids, and there is a ‘bump.’ From now on, ladies, I will have a bump, and it will be my baby bump, and let’s just all settle in and get used to it. It’s not going anywhere.”
“Making a couple hundred dollars a week to pay for my apartment, I really thought that was as good as it was going to get. I was completely and totally thrilled with that.”
“It’s really important for my kids to see that everyone doesn’t have the lives they see in Los Angeles. That doesn’t reflect the rest of the world. I want them to grow up with the Southern values I had – to look at people when they say hello and to stop and smell the roses. If I could do half as good a job as my mom did, I’d be pretty happy.”
“[On passing on that ‘country living’ to her kids] I want them to know that my mother was happy and free on the farm. I want them to know that you don’t need things to keep you occupied. I think that the only real way to understand a concept like that is to live it, so I guess we’d better head to the farm more often!”
“For my children, when you walk over this star I want you to remember, first of all, that I love you. And that this is about hard work and good luck and not a whole lot else. You define me, not this wonderful spot on the pavement.”
“My ambition shifted when I had kids in a way that I didn’t anticipate. I became more ambitious for my life as a whole, and for that kind of health and happiness of the overall family unit.”
“I try to be the best version of myself and to have faith that they’re watching me as carefully when I do something right as they do when I roll through a stop sign.”
“[On ex-husband Ben Affleck] I didn’t marry the big fat movie star; I married him. He’s the love of my life. What am I going to do about that? He’s the most brilliant person in any room, the most charismatic, the most generous. He’s just a complicated guy. I always say, ‘When his sun shines on you, you feel it.’ But when the sun is shining elsewhere, it’s cold. He can cast quite a shadow.”
“But to be honest, public scrutiny, everyone says, ‘Oh, you’ve had to go through this in public.’ The public isn’t what’s hard. What’s hard is going through it.”
“Every day is a fresh start. You always can say, ‘Today we’re going to try this!’ And if it goes horribly, you can say, ‘Today we’re throwing that out, and we’re trying this!'”
“Well, you can’t be trying to achieve success of any kind in this business without accepting that there’s going to be a flip side to it.”
“I’m a pretty hard worker.”
“I think that it’s not as crazily different, my job, from anyone else’s, as people let themselves believe. I think people get wrapped up in their own idea of what it is, but it’s really not that.”
“I know I live a charmed, beautiful life and nobody wants to hear a celebrity whine. The last thing I want to do is complain; I love what I do and I know every job comes with a downside.”
“My life is definitely changing for the better. I couldn’t be happier or feel more comfortable with the direction it’s going in.”
