Samuel L. Jackson quotes: on acting, fame, family, money, addiction, downtime, and more.
“If you do not have courage, you may not have the opportunity to use any of your other virtues.”
“Take a stand for what’s right. Raise a ruckus and make a change. You may not always be popular, but you’ll be part of something larger and bigger and greater than yourself. Besides, making history is extremely cool.”
“Just cuz you pour syrup on something doesn’t make it pancakes.”
“All movies aren’t fun; some are hard work. You try to do something and convey a set of emotions that have to do with some real life kind of stuff.”
“I tend to play characters that I can infuse with certain kinds of humor. Even the ‘baddest’ guy can be funny in his own particular way. I want the audience to engage with the character on some deeper level so that they leave the cinema still thinking about him.”
“I kind of realize that I have a tendency to choose the kind of films I watched when I was a kid and would go home and pretend with my friends that we were in those movies after we saw them.”
“I grew up during a time when every year you got a gun for Christmas because you played cowboys a lot. I had every cowboy iteration of gun you can imagine when I was a kid. We did a lot of gun fightin’.”
“I’ve been fortunate to be in films that are classic, that are going to be around.”
“Not everybody goes to movies to get their life changed.”
“I look at myself as an audience member. I still love movies, and I still go and sit in the back of the big dark room with everybody else, and I want the same thrill.”
“I understood, through rehab, things about creating characters. I understood that creating whole people means knowing where we come from, how we can make a mistake and how we overcome things to make ourselves stronger.”
“The best advice that was given to me was that I had to be 10 times smarter, braver, and more polite to be equal. So I did.”
“Lifelong readers continue to read, finding in books the means to enjoy life or endure it.”
“I was encouraged to read when I was very small. I was reading by the time I was three or four years old. I devoured books.”
“I grew up in the South with guns everywhere and we never shot anyone. This shooting is about people who aren’t taught the value of life.”
“I don’t run around shooting people. Much. I only shoot two people a year. Maybe.”
“I’m not as angry as I used to be. But I can get in touch with that anger pretty quickly if I feel my space is being invaded or somebody is not treating me with the respect that I think I want.”
“I never had one beer. If I bought a six-pack of beer, I kept drinking till all six beers were gone. You have to have that kind of understanding about yourself. I haven’t had a drink now in 12 years.”
“I guess the worst day I have had was when I had to stand up in rehab in front of my wife and daughter and say, ‘Hi, my name is Sam and I am an addict.'”
“It wasn’t until I let go of the idea of the brass ring that it showed up, and fortunately for me, it coincided with getting clean.”
“If you have an opportunity to use your voice you should use it.”
“Everybody knows, when you make an assumption, you make an ass out of you and umption.”
“Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to be quite true.”
“I don’t understand how people live without creating.”
“The certainty that life cannot be long, and the probability that it will be much shorter than nature allows, ought to awaken every man to the active prosecution of whatever he is desirous to perform.”
“You ain’t got but one life. You ought to live it the way you want.”
“The only thing I’ve kind of missed is finding a really good western that I want to do, because I watched westerns a lot.”
“Painters get up and paint. Writers get up and write. I like to get up and act. It’s not a big deal. It makes me happy.”
“I never did one thing right in my life, you know that? Not one. That takes skill.”
“I’m as serious as a heart attack.”
“The golf course is the only place I can go dressed like a pimp and fit in.”
“I love clothes. I’m a clothes horse.”
“My dad was an absentee dad, so it was always important to me that I was part of my daughter’s life, and she deserved two parents, which is part of the rationale behind us staying married for 30 years.”
“I’m a good son, a good father, a good husband – I’ve been married to the same woman for 30 years. I’m a good friend. I finished college, I have my education, I donate money anonymously. So when people criticize the kind of characters that I play on screen, I go, ‘You know, that’s part of history.'”
“I walk the streets, take the train, it’s real simple. Some actors create their own mythology: ‘Oh, I’m so famous I can’t go places, because I created this mythology that I’m so famous I can’t go places.'”
“I get up in the morning. I go to the golf course. I play golf every day when I’m not working. I come home, eat breakfast, go work out, I come home, I read a book or watch a movie and binge-watch a television show.”
“I get paid all day, every day, which is almost too much for a sensitive artist.”
“Anyone who tells you money can’t buy happiness never had any.”
“My ass may be dumb, but I ain’t no dumbass.”
Now hear from his Pulp Fiction partner, John Travolta, about success.
