Bill Murray quotes: notable sentences from actor Bill Murray.
“I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: ‘Try being rich first.’ See if that doesn’t cover most of it. There’s not much downside to being rich, other than paying taxes and having your relatives ask you for money. But when you become famous, you end up with a 24-hour job.”
“Nothing prepared me for being this awesome. It’s kind of a shock. It’s kind of a shock to wake up every morning and be bathed in this purple light.”
“I live a little bit on the seat of my pants, I try to be alert and available… for life to happen to me. We’re in this life, and if you’re not available, the sort of ordinary time goes past and you didn’t live it. But if you’re available, life gets huge. You’re really living it.”
“We do need each other. It’s lonely to really effectively live your life, and anyone you can give help to, or get help from – that’s part of your obligation.”
“The more relaxed you are, the better you are at everything: the better you are with your loved ones, the better you are with your enemies, the better you are at your job, the better you are with yourself.”
“I think everyone becomes a jerk for about two years when they become famous. So I give people two years to figure it out and pull it together. But you end up behaving poorly because there’s just no training for it. There’s nothing your parents ever did, no matter what kind of people they are, because everything just gets different. The information coming to you comes differently, and people treat you differently, sort of, and everything changes for us. So it takes you a little while to figure it out.”
“I don’t believe that you can give the same performance every take. It’s physically impossible, so why bother? If you don’t do what is happening at that moment, then it’s not real. Then you’re holding something back.”
“The best way to teach your kids about taxes is by eating 30% of their ice cream.”
“It’s an amazing triumph even to make a bad movie. Even a crap film is really an extraordinary achievement. You’re taking a two-dimensional object and making it three-dimensional. The number of people. The number of days. The number of cuts.”
“I take my chances on a job or a person, as opposed to a situation. I don’t like to have a situation placed over my head.”
“If you go to acting class, you don’t really die, because there’s never really an audience. But if you work for Second City, there’s an audience, and you die in the improv set five times out of nine. So, once you get over your fear of dying, nothing else ever really scares you. And Saturday Night Live was as tough as Second City. Once you get through those, making movies is a joke.”
“It’s hard to be an artist. It’s hard to be anything. It’s just hard to be.”
“There’s only a couple times when fame is ever helpful. Sometimes you can get into a restaurant where the kitchen is just closing. Sometimes you can avoid a traffic violation. But the only time it really matters is in the emergency room with your kids. That’s when you want to be noticed, because it’s very easy to get forgotten in an ER. It’s the only time when I would ever say, ‘Thank God. Thank God.’ There’s no other time.”
“It’s extremely powerful to say no; it’s really the most powerful thing to say.”
“A moat can be a pretty good thing. It can be lovely. It keeps rodents away from the castle. It can have fish in it. Even fish that talk. If you give people access, they take advantage. My phone would ring 75 times in a row. Finally, I would pick it up and say, ‘Who the hell is this?’ ‘Oh, hi! I’m calling from so-and-so’s office…’ What kind of person would ever, ever let the phone ring 75 times? And I guess that’s when I started thinking: I can do without these people.”
“People are like music. Some speak the truth, and others are just noise.”
“I think midlife crisis is just a point where people’s careers have reached some plateau and they have to reflect on their personal relationships.”
“Sentimentality to me is a symbol that we’ve left the planet. Okay, bye-bye. Let me know when you come back because you’re no longer here. You left. It reminds of being at a funeral, like my dad dies and the grief is just overpowering. And all anyone can say to you is, ‘Well, he’s probably up there in heaven, bowling with uncle George.’ It’s like, ‘Yeah, that’s probably it. He’s up there bowling with uncle George.’ He’s dead. He’s gone. What am I going to do? Talk to me. Don’t make up your own dreamscape. Stay here with me, will you? Don’t go away.”
“Don’t think about your errors or failures, otherwise you’ll never do a thing.”
“I’m not that organized. I’m not one of those guys. I mean, you read it, you look at it, and you go: I have that in me, I can do that. I don’t necessarily get all mental. There are people that are working with you on every level and on a movie, you’re working with people that are, ideally, all serving the same goal, and that’s what helps me get into a role.”
“Life is so damn short. For f*ck’s sake, just do what makes you happy.”
“If you can consciously let yourself get taken and see where you go, that’s an exercise. That’s discipline. To follow the scent. Let yourself go and see what happens, that takes a bit of courage.”
“As I once said to one of my brothers, ‘This is your life, not a rehearsal.’ Somewhere there’s a score being kept, so you have an obligation to live life as well as you can, be as engaged as you can. The human condition means that we can zone out and forget what the hell we’re doing. So the secret is to have a sense of yourself, your real self, your unique self. And not just once in a while, or once a day, but all through the day, the week, and life. You know what they say: ‘Ain’t no try, ain’t nothing to it but to do it.'”
“You can handle just about anything that comes at us out on the road with a believable grin, common sense, and whiskey.”
“You gotta commit. You’ve gotta go out there and improvise and you’ve gotta be completely unafraid to die. You’ve got to be able to take a chance to die. And you have to die lots. You have to die all the time.”
For more million dollar wit, continue with Kevin Hart’s quotes.
