Jonah Hill quotes: superbad sayings from jiggity Jonah.
“Nobody’s perfect, but as long as you admit you f*cked up and have a plan to work on it, you’re pretty cool.”
“You just have to be strong and don’t be stupid; freedom of choice is a big responsibility.”
“When you create something, you’re free to explore it however you want to do it.”
“I think all great businesses come from the necessity of what you want that’s not in the marketplace.”
“Tell someone the story if they’re willing to listen. You’ll learn so much about what’s working and not working. You’ll realize what you’re passionate about.”
“It’s always better to shock people and change people’s expectations than to give them exactly what they think you can do.”
“I think morality is so individual and personal, and people draw their own lines of what that means for them.”
“You really feel an obligation to someone when they’re trusting you to do something, and you promise that you’ll come through for them.”
“Be open to other people’s ideas. Don’t get arrogant about your ideas. Shoot a lot of options so you’re not stuck with just one version of something.”
“I assume everything I do in life is gonna be a failure, and then if it turns up roses, then I’m psyched.”
“When you go out to make something, you want it to be great. You need to put a bubble around that, so no one can get into the force field and change what you’re setting out to make… allowing our power to protect the integrity of what you’re doing.”
“I think life is so confusing for people, well, for everybody, and it’s so hard and confusing that maybe learning about people and their mistakes gives me some understanding that makes me feel good.”
“It’s about learning your own boundaries as you grow up.”
“The truth seems to be the only thing that is correct. And people can’t hate when you tell the truth.”
“The biggest admission I had to make to the world is that I’m deeply, deeply sensitive, and when someone says something unpleasant to me, it hurts – just like it would everybody else. I was a sensitive kid who grew up in this world, which involved a lot of unpleasant language, and it caused a lot of damage. The greatest lie we all tell is that we’re all okay all the time. My cool job doesn’t exempt me from feeling scared or hurt or silly or… it’s nice to feel okay being the same person I am behind closed doors as [I am] out in the real world, making my movies and all that stuff.”
“It’s not ‘through’ it, we’re in it! That’s how life is. We’re so trained to be like, ‘I’m goooood!’ And then your Instagram’s like, ‘I’m awesome!’ But that’s not what life’s like. There’s no end, there’s no winning. There’s just, ‘Cool, this is what I am right now.’ And I’m comfortable being that. And there’s good days and bad days.”
“Comedies are doing well because I think people want to laugh and not think about everything for a little bit.”
“It’s harder to be funny if you’re handsome than if you’re very normal-looking. It’s just more relatable. You’re the underdog. I mean it’s funny to see people struggle, and you don’t buy that Brad Pitt is struggling, you know that guy could be the most skill-less guy in the world, but if you look like that you will be fine for the rest of your life.”
“I mean, I find things that happened in real life to be the funniest – things that you observe instead of crazy abstract things, you know.”
“If you’re trying to make someone happy, you gotta try and make them happy.”
“Having a bad day doesn’t reflect who I am as a person, you know? It’s about learning what to show people about your life. It’s still a learning process, I suspect.”
“My life is very special, and I learn to deal with things as they come. Sometimes it takes years of trial and error.”
“It wasn’t like, ‘I’mma lose weight and start doing dramas.’ I wanted to be healthier, and that was the impetus for wanting to lose weight. It’s just about being healthy and feeling good.”
“I always wanted to be a filmmaker when I was younger, not an actor. I was an eight-year-old who dreamed of being a writer on The Simpsons, which was a weird dream to have. But I started taking acting classes as a way to learn how to direct actors and I sort of fell in love with it.”
“As an actor, you tell part of a story. As a writer, you get more of telling that story. But as a director, they’re seeing the world through your eyes.”
“With everything else you’re working off something else, so if you’re an actor, you’re working off a script and a character, which has already been created, and if you’re a director and you didn’t write it you’re working off a script that exists. But as a writer, it’s just a blank page. There was nothing, and then there’s something. And I think there’s a lot of gratification that comes along with that.”
“I wanted to get in better shape, so I called Channing Tatum and said, ‘Hey, if I ate less and go to a trainer, will I get in better shape?’ He said, ‘Yes, you dumb motherf*cker, of course you will.’ It’s the simplest thing in the entire world.”
“Writing is as big a part of my career as acting is, financially and time-wise. So, yeah, I love it. That’s all I wanted to do since I was young, was be a writer. So that and acting are the two most important aspects of my career.”
“I believe in collaboration. I think that is the most entertaining and effective way to write for me, personally.”
“I always say I want to eventually shift my career to directing and writing. Writing has made me a better actor. Acting has made me a better writer. So why wouldn’t directing make me a better actor and writer?”
“I love it, man… and I’m lucky enough to write movies as a job! I just feel really blessed and can’t believe it’s happening.”
“Besides the fact that I make movies, there’s nothing interesting about my life at all, unfortunately.”
“Professionally, I feel like I won the lottery and I am the luckiest person in the entire world.”
“You can diss me all you want on a blog, or write whatever you want… and I’ll just be like, ‘Whatever, man. Scorsese thinks I’m awesome.’ He hired me and didn’t fire me, so I can kind of not care now. It really did give me personal assurance that I’m doing the right thing and that I’m talented in certain ways because he’s so important to me.”
“All this stuff is so mind-blowing to me that I get to do in my life. Throwing the first pitch out at the White Sox game on a random Wednesday? Like who am I? How did I get this life? I’m glad I’m not jaded, and little kids are the least jaded people in the entire world, so it’s fun to be around people that still find wonder in how cool things are.”
“I feel like I’ve just gone through this whole process and it hasn’t even finished yet.”
Related: The Wolf of Wall Street quotes.
