Rob Lowe quotes: good-lookin’ lessons from the A-list actor.
“To have a great life you need great memories. Grab any intriguing offer. Say yes to a challenge and to the unknown. Be creative in adding drama and scope to your life. Work at it like a job. Money from effort comes and goes, but effort from imagination and following adventure creates stories that you keep forever. And anyone can do it.”
“Any time an opportunity scares you that much, you should seriously consider saying yes.”
“I have a friend who is very successful in business, and his motto is, ‘Don’t do what you can do. Do what only you can do.’ First of all, you have to know what your specific, unique gift is – and then you do that.”
“There is good and evil in each of us, and you can easily be led to the dark side.”
“You show me a perfect person and I’ll show you somebody who has lived a very closed life.”
“I’m thinking of how unexpected and yet oddly preordained life can be. Events are upon you in an instant, unforeseen and without warning, and oftentimes marked with disappointment and tragedy, but equally often leading to a better understanding of the bittersweet truth of life.”
“So I came to the realization: nothing in life is unfair. It’s just life.”
“Fake confidence on the outside often trumps truthful turmoil on the inside.”
“To achieve longevity you will have cycles. No one gets there in one straight shot.”
“Anyone who’s lived their life to the fullest extent has a scandal buried somewhere.”
“People are human. There’s such a premium today on being perfect. That’s just not the way people are.”
“I wouldn’t be where I am today without my mistakes. Particularly my mistakes. Exclusively my mistakes.”
“I didn’t go to Ivy League schools. I dropped out of college to go into movies.”
“I’ve gotten to believe it’s more fun to play politicians than actually be them.”
“It took being famous to make me cool, which, by the way, I never forgot.”
“Be funny whenever possible, even if some people don’t get it.”
“When I was young and crazy, I was young and crazy. It can be hard enough just to be in your teens and 20s. Then add fame, money, access, and every single person telling you that you’re the greatest person who ever was, and it can be a recipe for disaster. Some people literally don’t survive it.”
“I wouldn’t go back on my old days, though; everybody needs to have their wild years. It’s just a question of when and I’d rather have had them early than be doing it as a mid-life crisis type thing.”
“When I hear that I realize how quickly time passes and how everybody goes on their journeys and they’re always unbelievable and they never go where you think they’re going to take you and, quite frankly, it also makes me feel a little old.”
“I think part of maturity is knowing who you are.”
“I think of myself as a human being first and foremost, and secondly as a person whose profession is acting. If people want to make that into something more or less, that’s up to them.”
“There is no recovery for anyone without lifting the lid on the pain of the past and letting in the light.”
“Sobriety was the greatest gift I ever gave myself. I don’t put it on a platform. I don’t campaign about it. It’s just something that works for me. It enabled me to really connect with another human being – my wife, which I was never able to do before.”
“I have other obligations now – the show, my family, my life… though I know that without my sobriety I wouldn’t have any of those things.”
“Making memories matters.”
“The challenge as a parent is letting your kids fail in the right ways because that’s where we do most of our learning.”
“I try to hold on to the things I believe to be good and true. Good things happen to good people. Karma is real. There is a larger, better plan for us all if we stay positive, keep pushing and get out of our own way.”
“I feel pressures to stay relevant. To stay interesting and interested. To stay at the top of my game and expand.”
“I really make a point of never worrying, or trying not to worry, about the way I’m perceived. You’ll go crazy otherwise.”
“If people are attracted to me, I like to think it’s because I’m an interesting person, fairly smart, well-rounded, with a good sense of humor. I would like to think that’s what I am. I would like to think people see it. If people find me attractive, it would be for reasons that anybody finds anybody attractive. It’s something that comes from within, and it manifests itself physically.”
“Things that I consider bad qualities, I always try and figure out where they are coming from. I don’t consider ambition to be a bad one. It’s served me very well in my life. Very well.”
“Adventure is important in life.”
“I think it was Alfred Hitchcock who said 90% of successful moviemaking is in the casting. The same is true in life. Who you are exposed to, who you choose to surround yourself with, is a unique variable in all of our experiences and it is hugely important in making us who we are. Seek out interesting characters, tough adversaries and strong mentors and your life can be rich, textured, highly entertaining and successful, like a Best Picture winner. Surround yourself with dullards, people of vanilla safety and unextraordinary ease, and you may find your life going straight to DVD.”
“This, right here, right now, is our life. It is not our parents’ or our children’s, not our husband’s or our wive’s. It is not made more or less valuable by our job or how much we have in the bank. Our life is ours. It is the only one we will ever have. And we should love it.”
“I never get bored talking about themes dealing with ambition, leadership and what it means to be an American. I love that stuff.”
“If somebody else is achieving more than I am, that means I can do it, too. Everybody has the ability to raise themselves up, and my life has been marked by that.”
“I don’t look back with any bitterness, though there are a couple of judgment calls and some ’80s hairdos that I’d like to do over.”
“I loved fun. I spent my whole life in search of fun. I have not given up that part of myself.”
“I have had a lot of blessed, interesting things happen to me and have bumped up against some amazing people.”
“I have a lot of great memories, but I can’t imagine anything more exciting than the life I have now.”
