Gwyneth Paltrow quotes: why her dad called her an asshole, why she stopped being so outrageous, how she keeps her bikini body, what people can do with their opinions, and more.
“If you carve out what you expect, that’s how you end up getting disappointed, not living fully in the present.”
“Self-belief is everything. Whether you want to start a law firm or a jewelry business… you have to have enough self-belief to see where you’re gonna end up and not let anybody derail you.”
“It is finally when you let go of what people expect you to be and people’s perceptions of you that you’re able to be the version of yourself that you’re supposed to be – like in God’s eyes. It doesn’t matter if you’re half-crazy, or eccentric, or whatever it is – that you have to be true to who you were born to be.”
“You have to know why you’re rushing about. It’s okay to rush about but it’s important to know what’s driving you, the positives of it and the negatives of it.”
“It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. It matters what you think of yourself… so if anyone is going to ask my advice, I’d say do what is right for you and don’t give a sh*t what anyone else thinks.”
“There’s so many ups and downs, and there’s so many pieces to trying to build a business, and if the intention isn’t very, very clear and the business isn’t reflecting that intention, then it makes it much harder.”
“I think the most clear, direct way to empowerment is to really know yourself and to really use your voice and to not be afraid of other people’s reactions.”
“I look for people who have a slightly different perspective and are trying to move the needle a little bit and push boundaries.”
“I’m always interested in what’s next or what is the new kind of thinking.”
“If your role is to mentor somebody, what you’re essentially doing is taking stock of what you’ve learned, the mistakes you’ve made, the successes you’ve had, and you kind of coalesce them and then you translate them back out.”
“Beauty, to me, is about being comfortable in your own skin.”
“I’ve had a great deal of suffering in my life. I’ve lost people – my first cousin, my best friend in a car accident. I’ve had a lot of really heartbreaking, difficult things. But all of those things have strengthened my resolve to make the best of my life.”
“I don’t know if I came to this life with it or if it’s something that came to me in my childhood, but I do feel that some of the things my parents said to me and how they raised me really stuck with me.”
“My father was really good at having me stand on my own two feet, both financially and philosophically. His whole parenting philosophy was to give my brother and me the skills to be grown-ups and the curiosity to ask the right questions.”
“I remember when I started acting and didn’t get a part and was really jealous of the girl who got it. My mom would say to me, ‘If you don’t get a part, that means it’s not your part. It’s just not yours. You will have your parts.’ It really recalibrated me at a very young age to where I could be driven because I was trying to achieve things for myself, and that had nothing to do with what anybody else was doing.”
“I think the most important beauty lesson I’ve learned from my mom is to be happy in what you do.”
“I remember when I was maybe 27 years old and kind of at the height of my movie stardom – it was around the time of the Oscar and this and that. I think I was very much believing my own hype, which, how could you not? I was sitting with my dad, feeling great about my life and everything that was happening, and he was like, ‘You know, you’re getting a little weird… you’re kind of an asshole.’ And I was like, ‘What the hell?’ I was totally devastated. But it turned out to be basically the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“The work gets more difficult as you get older. You learn more and you gather more experiences, there is deeper pain and higher highs.”
“I think my days of trying outrageous things are over. I’m not looking for trends, I just want to be the best version of myself.”
“Everything I wanted to achieve, I achieved… I’m not one of those people who keeps raising the bar.”
“My life is good because I am not passive about it. I invest in what is real. Like real people, to do real things, for the real me.”
“The reason I can be 38 and have two kids and wear a bikini is because I work my ass off. It’s not an accident. It’s not luck, it’s not fairy dust, it’s not good genes. It’s killing myself for an hour and half five days a week, but what I get out of it is relative to what I put into it.”
“There have been countless times where I’ve worked out with my kids crawling around all over the place. You just make it work.”
“It’s so much easier to sit home and not exercise and criticize other people. What I love is inspiring people.”
“I do really believe that beauty comes from within, mostly how you feel about yourself and how you express love of yourself, but also in the form of nutrition.”
“As you go through life you realize that the love that you have for the people in your life and their love for you is all that matters. It’s really about how you regard them and how they regard you.”
“I’ve had a very interesting career. I get to do amazing things and work with amazing people and travel and learn languages – things most people don’t get the opportunity to do.”
“I am who I am. I can’t pretend to be somebody who makes $25,000 a year.”
“I realized life is so short and precious, you should do things that make you feel inspired, that push you and teach you something. I’d rather not have a big house, a huge closet of clothes, diamonds and a private plane, and instead a body of work that I’m proud of.”
“I love being. There’s so much wisdom in it. You wake up in the morning and you think, ‘Hey, isn’t it great just being?'”
“Invest in what’s real. Clean as you go. Drink while you cook. Make it fun. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It will be what it will be.”
“I personally believe in some sort of divine order – or energy. I do believe that everything happens for a reason. I do think that when something bad happens to someone it’s with the purpose of awakening them. I do think there is some force behind that. I don’t think there are accidents.”
