Jim Carrey Quotations

That's the trouble with being me. At this point, nobody gives a damn what my problem is. I could literally have a tumor on the side of my head and they'd be like, 'Yeah, big deal. I'd eat a tumor every morning for the kinda money you're pulling down.'

One thing I hope I'll never be is drunk with my own power. And anybody who says I am will never work in this town again.

Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.

Ya know what I do almost every day? I wash. Personal hygiene is part of the package with me.

I'm the first to admit this whole salary thing is getting out of control. In the final analysis, it's still about the work.

It's nice to finally get scripts offered to me that aren't the ones Tom Hanks wipes his butt with.

My family kinda hit the skids. We were experiencing poverty at that point. We all got a job, where the whole family had to work as security guards and janitors. And I just got angry.

I used to draw a lot. If my mother would ask me to do something else, I'd have a hairy conniption. I'd just go crazy.

I tend to stay up late, not because I'm partying but because it's the only time of the day when I'm alone and don't have to be performing.

I don't think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain't desperate at some point, you ain't interesting.

You know, I live a monastic lifestyle. No, I do. I do live in extremes, basically. I go back and forth. Once every six months, I'll have a day where I eat more chocolate than has ever been consumed by a human being.

Life opens up opportunities to you, and you either take them or you stay afraid of taking them.

My focus is to forget the pain of life. Forget the pain, mock the pain, reduce it. And laugh.

I praticed making faces in the mirror and it would drive my mother crazy. She used to scare me by saying that I was going to see the devil if I kept looking in the mirror. That fascinated me even more, of course.

I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.

If you aren't in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret.

Creative people don't behave very well generally. If you're looking for examples of good relationships in show business, you're gonna be depressed real fast. I don't have time for anything else right now but work and my daughter. She's my first priority.

I wake up some mornings and sit and have my coffee and look out at my beautiful garden, and I go, 'Remember how good this is. Because you can lose it.'

Maybe there is no actual place called hell. Maybe hell is just having to listen to our grandparents breathe through their noses when they're eating sandwiches.

Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything, or creating anything. Period. If you ain't desperate at some point, you ain't interesting.

It was such a leap in my career when 'Truman Show' came along. It's always been a long process for me insofar as recognition goes, but that's OK because you appreciate it when it comes.

People need motivation to do anything. I don't think human beings learn anything without desperation.

Maybe other people will try to limit me but I don't limit myself.

I got a lot of support from my parents. That's the one thing I always appreciated. They didn't tell me I was being stupid; they told me I was being funny.

When the first big paycheque with 'Dumb And Dumber' hit, I went: 'Gosh, I wonder if this will affect my performance. Will I do a take and think, was that worth $7 million?' But that never happened. If anything, it made me rebel against that thing when people who get rich start playing it safe.

My report card always said, 'Jim finishes first and then disrupts the other students'.

A lot of good love can happen in ten years.

Life is an ordeal, albeit an exciting one, but I wouldn't trade it for the good old days of poverty and obscurity.

It is better to risk starving to death then surrender. If you give up on your dreams, what's left?

Morgan Freeman is so class. He's so cool. He's so scary.

I really believe in the philosophy that you create your own universe. I'm just trying to create a good one for myself.

I'm very serious about no alcohol, no drugs. Life is too beautiful.

My upbringing in Canada made me the person I am. I will always be proud to be a Canadian.

I try to do something the audience might not have seen before. Like if I'm gonna kiss a girl I wanna kiss her like a girl has never been kissed. Like maybe I would kick her legs out from under her and catch her right before she hits the ground and then kiss her.

My life is not unlike Truman's. I can't go anywhere.

I think I could go away tomorrow. I've already accomplished something. It's such a selfish business that sometimes I get sick of myself.

I haven't been as wild with my money as somebody like me might have been. I've been very safe, very conservative with investments. I don't blow money. I don't have a ton of houses. I know things can go away. I've already had that experience.

Some nights it was a melee, literally, where I'd be standing trying to defend myself for what I was doing. People would be screaming at me to do my old act, and getting actually violent and angry at me.

I've arrived at the place if I'm not taking a career risk, I'm not happy. If I'm scared, then I know I'm being challenged.

We had problems like all families but we had a lot of love. I was extremely loved. We always felt we had each other.

For some reason I did something where I realized I could get a reaction. That was when I broke out of my shell at school, because I really didn't have any friends or anything like that and I just kind of was going along, and then finally I did this zany thing, and all of a sudden I had tons of friends.

Green Eggs and Ham was the story of my life. I wouldn't eat a thing when I was a kid, but Dr. Seuss inspired me to try cauliflower!

I refuse to feel guilty. I feel guilty about too much in my life but not about money. I went through periods when I had nothing, so somebody in my family has to get stinkin' wealthy.

I really want to love somebody. I do. I just don't know if it's possible forever and ever.

I'm so wrapped up in my work that it's often impossible to consider other things in my life. My marriage ended in divorce because of this, my relationship with Holly has suffered by this.

What I have in common with the character in 'Truman' is this incredible need to please people. I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.

I need privacy. I would think that because what I do makes a lot of people happy that I might deserve a little bit of respect in return. Instead, the papers try to drag me off my pedestal.

I know this sounds strange, but as a kid, I was really shy. Painfully shy. The turning point was freshman year, when I was the biggest geek alive. No one, I mean no one, even talked to me.

I've tried everything. I've done therapy, I've done colonics. I went to a psychic who had me running around town buying pieces of ribbon to fill the colors in my aura. Did the Prozac thing.

If I had never ventured beyond being a stand-up comic, then I would be sitting in my house today working on my Leonardo DiCaprio impression.

Before I do anything, I think, well what hasn't been seen. Sometimes, that turns out to be something ghastly and not fit for society. And sometimes that inspiration becomes something that's really worthwhile.

Either you're the one erasing or you're the one being erased.

My mother was a professional sick person; she took a lot of pain pills. There are many people like that. It's just how they are used to getting attention. I always remember she's the daughter of alcoholics who'd leave her alone at Christmas time.

I absolutely want to have a career where you make'em laugh and make'em cry. It's all theater.

But, you know, you can't be a star at home.

I'm a hard guy to live with. I'm like a caged animal. I'm up all night walking around the living room. It's hard for me to come down from what I do.

I want to be the greatest actor that ever lived, frankly. I'd love that. But I don't need to be. I just want to be here. That's it.

I don't care if people think I am an overactor, as long as they enjoy what I do. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter.

I don't make it in regular channels, and that's okay for me.

I've never been one to sit back and go, 'I'd better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don't want to lose them.'

My dad was like a stage mother he always pushed me to do what I wanted.

It's hard for anybody who's been with me not to feel starved for affection when I'm making love to my ideas. Maybe it's not meant for me to settle down and be married.

The money can be a hindrance to someone like me because the danger is that you start thinking, 'Is that a $20 million take?' That kind of thing, and being self-critical.

There was a time when people said, 'Jim, if you keep on making faces, your face will freeze like that.' Now they just say, 'Pay him!'

Second year in a row -- what's going on here, man? ... I'm the establishment I once rejected. ... I'm the Tom Hanks of the Golden Globes.

New management came in and they cleaned everybody out so we hit the skids. We lived in a van, so I kind of know what happens to people when this happens.

If I'm not back in five minutes... just wait longer!

I enjoy his music, but he scares me, ... His lyrics are totally socially irresponsible. But I think if we just spend more time with our kids, we'll be OK.

The truth will set you free.

Ever since I started to get recognition I've picked out certain fans and reverse-stalked them.

There's new territory, there's new places to go, new things to explore. Why stay back there? ... Maybe it will take three films to find another character that is really totally original, but I've got a lifetime, so why waste it just repeating myself.

I'm not a huge remake fan but I loved the first movie, and I thought it was more relevant now than it was back then, because of all the Enron-type swindles. I thought it would be a great opportunity to take a shot at all the white-collar creeps and give people a bit of relief, because everyone's feeling they're part of a company these days. It's a good outlet for that frustration.

[The highs and lows of show business is] a rollercoaster for sure. There's so many highs, there's just moments of your life where you go, "Wow I can't believe how insanely lucky I am," and then you can turn around and the next moment feel so completely caught up in your own wanting, and desiring, and needing and feel like somehow you're missing something. It's just higher the high, the lower the low.

Everything can be made fun of. The most serious things are ripe for making fun of them.

I like to enjoy life, I like to engage in life, so I would say I'm a yes man.

I'm always trying to complicate things. For some reason I'll go, "Well, maybe I can get that in," and stuff like that. I always make it really hard for myself.

I expected that most of my career would be in dramatic acting. My hero was James Dean.

The wonderful thing about digital process is that I can be cast in films that I would never be cast in. If I have it in my soul to play the character it doesn't matter what my face looks like, or my age. It's really liberating.

I don't know what happened to architecture [in Las-Vegas] I think they're getting us ready for space colonies or something, nobody puts a window in that you can crack.

The combination of what's written and just being in the moment is always the best way. You gotta start out with something solid and then you play.

When you are a kid, you need to have something to do. This will keep you off the streets.

My career has been in a weird kind of like low-flying under the radar-kind of place. I never made it on "Saturday Night Live" where all my friends did.

I like challenges and I don't believe in failure. I don't believe in regrets. I believe suffering, failure - all those concepts - are things that are absolutely necessary to make us the best people that we can be, the best at whatever we want to do.

I come from the philosophy of: "Whatever happens to me is the greatest thing that could happen, no matter what." Sometimes in the moment I have a regret, but then I have found myself every time down the line saying to myself: "I wouldn't be here if it weren't for that so called failure."

What I do as an art form is try to make people feel good and if I do try to make them feel bad, it's for a reason. There's something I am trying to say.

Acting is divine dissatisfaction. It's the greatest thing in the world to do, but you are never satisfied with it ever.

I want to be a positive force in the world, I would like to make people happy.

I do whatever [comedies] I'm attracted to. It's like the woman who stands out in the crowd, who for some reason you notice, that's the one you're supposed to dance with at that time in your life. That's just what it is with scripts - they find you when you're emotionally in the right place to do them.

As far as I'm concerned, everything bad that happens in the world stems from the same place, they're people who don't feel important.

I cannot be contained...bec ause I am the container

Magicians are definitely more arrogant. They're kind of like "Abra Kadabra, you're an idiot," they don't let you in on the joke. Comedians, you're always in on the joke unless it's Andy Kaufman.

When I started to realise how important the film was to people I thought there is a lot of negative stuff going on in the world, maybe they need these two people

Comedy started out as my hobby and then it became my profession. It's like being on call all the time, like having a built-in beeper. You can't just leave the office and relax because you never know when you'll think of something funny.

I think we're past the time in history where you have to come out and say, "you know I'm just happy all the time! I'm a joker, I'm a crazy man!" you know kind of thing. I think people understand I can turn that switch on but I'm also a sensitive, normal human being with feelings and I know how to express those too.

I discovered a new thing in the Lord's Prayer that kind of hit me. "on earth as it is heaven" to me it means whatever you take out into the world is what you're going to draw out. like those days when you're all yang and no yin, and you're fighting with people inside, and you can't calm yourself down, and suddenly you're pulled over by the cops. everything goes wrong in the same day because you created it. so, if you get heaven within you, it'll be all around you. if hell is within you, it'll be around you. it's always created here first.

I would challenge anybody in their darkest moment to write what they're grateful for, even stupid little things like the green grass that made them feel good, the friendly conversation they had with somebody on an alevator. You start to realize how rich you are.

Just because I rock doesn't mean I am made of stone.

I think if we all acted the way we felt, four out of eight people at a dinner table would be sitting there sobbing.

The thing is, I've always tried to create transcendent moments. Moments that take people away from their concerns. Heaven to me is when people find a way to become so involved with life that they're no longer concerned for the future.

I'm talkin' about a place where the beer flows like wine, where the women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano. I'm talkin' about Aspen.