Matthew Perry Quotations

In high school, my prom date fooled around with another guy - on prom night!

'Friends' was a magical thing, and no one's going to ever have anything like that again.

I grew up babysitting and always enjoyed it. I love family. A couple of my closest friends have kids, and I'm their godfather, and that's one of my greatest pleasures in life, just picking them up from school and hanging out with them.

The thing is, if I don't have sobriety, I don't have anything.

The thing that I'm most proud of in my life is that if a stranger came up to me and said, 'I can't stop drinking. I can't stop drinking. Can you help me?' I can say, 'Yes, I can help you.'

I love the idea of 'the one' but I actually believe that there isn't a Miss Right. There are 12,000 Miss Rights out there and it's all timing.

My favorite six words in recovery are: trust God, clean house, and help others.

I would always be the kid that got in trouble in school, that's for sure, for joking around.

There are two ways to go when you hit that crossroads in your life: There is the bad way, when you sort of give up, and then there is the really hard way, when you fight back. I went the hard way and came out of it okay. Now, I'm sitting here and doing great.

A lot of people think that addiction is a choice. A lot of people think it's a matter of will. That has not been my experience. I don't find it to have anything to do with strength.

I was a very good tennis player in Ottawa, Canada - nationally ranked when I was, like, 13. Then I moved to Los Angeles when I was 15, and everyone in L.A. just killed me. I was pretty great in Canada. Not so much in Los Angeles.

I used to be a real prince charming if I went on a date with a girl. But then I'd get to where I was likely to have a stroke from the stress of keeping up my act. I've since learned the key to a good date is to pay attention on her.

I learned a valuable lesson doing 'Mr. Sunshine,' which is that I didn't want to be in charge because it's too much. Being in charge and acting in every scene was just too difficult. It's like eating dinner in a moving golf cart every night.

I have a huge interest in hockey because I grew up in Canada, where it's kind of the law that you love hockey.

Trying to overcome addiction is one of the hardest things for a person to do. And the fact that I had to do it under the scrutiny of tabloid press at first made it seem even more difficult. But in fact, it oddly ended up being a plus. Because of the tabloid stuff, it wasn't like I could walk into a bar and order a drink.

In a perfect world, my tennis game gets better. I have kids and a beautiful wife and live on some hill somewhere that's not in Los Angeles. And the script that Tom Hanks just barely turned down gets in my hands.

After I got my first laugh on stage, I was hooked.

They say that women like a man who can make them laugh, and I find that if you can make a woman laugh on the first and second dates, then you're doing well.

When I die, I'd like' Friends' to be listed behind 'helping people.'

I'm just glad that the whole John Wayne persona of a man is sort of old school now, because I'd never be able to do that. If that was the going rate today, I wouldn't be working.

I have a well-documented history of trouble with intimacy.

I'm a sensitive guy. If you are a woman and you're in any kind of emotional duress and you write a song about it, I'll buy you album.

I need a woman to have a quirky sense of humor. There's a bunch of jokes I use, and if she doesn't get them, she's probably not for me.

The key to sitcom success is miserable people. If you see a happy couple, it's just gone, like when Sam and Diane got together on Cheers.

My feeling on therapy is it's a luxury, and if you're fortunate enough to get some smart people to talk to about life, then that's fortunate and you should go for it.

When I was, like, 15, I realized there could be a career in making people laugh - like, you could get paid to do it. That was insane to me.

She did an amazing job casting the show, obviously, and she's done an even more amazing job spearheading this charity.

My favorite actor was, is, Michael Keaton. Certainly growing up, in the movie 'Night Shift' he did something brand new that I hadn't seen before that we all steal from now. And then it was in 1987 he did the movie 'Clean and Sober' and 'Beetlejuice' in the same year, and that was when I said, 'Wow, that's what I want to do.'

I was the coolest guy of the non-cool crowd.

I'm amazed at how a lot of people have come up to me and said, 'That's about time that happened,' ... And I'm trying to figure out -- because we never really set anything up. It just kind of happened.

I can tell if someone is talking to me because I'm on ""Friends"" or cause they just think I'm neat. You know I don't think I've ever spent more than five or ten minutes with somebody who was ogling me because they recognized me from the show.

He was completely straight while we were doing the movie, ... And I guess at the culmination of the film, things turned bad for him.

I was like: I'm going to ask Julia Roberts out but I'm going to be very nervous about it. Then she said yes, I got even more nervous.

I was about as scared as I can get without vomiting or having a heart attack or something, ... Access Hollywood.

I would love to have kids one day. In fact, I'm pretty good with them. I grew up with five half-siblings, the youngest of whom is 11 years younger than me, so I think I learned some pretty cool parenting skills quite early on in life.

When I read the script of Chandler, I thought WOW I can really shake hands with this guy. Chandlers a sarcastic guy, dry, funny - a guy who's not comfortable unless he's joking and hiding the emotional stuff that's going on with him. And Yeah, I can relate to that a bit.

Everything is just falling into place for me right now. I just turned 30, which I thought I was going to be bummed about, but I'm not.

I've certainly had a lot of experiences in my life where I was much too self-centered.

Actually, as a kid I wanted to be a tennis player, but I wasn't good enough, so I became an actor. Since then, I've just been lip-locking with gorgeous babes. So, let that be a lesson to all you little tennis players out there.

That's like the greatest experiences of my life still, 'Friends,' so it's not something I want to get away from, but I do want to try and show something new.

There was a time when I wasn't working a lot. It ebbs and flows. Mostly I was just living my life and playing 'Fallout 3,' a very fun game.

There was steam coming out of my ears, I wanted to be famous so badly. You want the attention, you want the bucks, and you want the best seat in the restaurant. I didn't think what the repercussions would be.

The thing is that nobody can make anybody do anything, ... And you can have talk after talk after talk, but the person who is in trouble really needs to want to not be in trouble for it to work out.

I learned to fall down early in life - I was, like, six - because I realized it was a way to make girls laugh.

I'm very similar to Chandler in many ways, although Chandler is funnier than me, and Chandler absolutely hates his job whereas I absolutely love my job.

I'm obviously comfortable with my feminine side! I didn't have any reservations playing a gay guy as it was kind of a neat idea to me. I'm able to drop all the crappy male stuff of trying to impress the girl and get her into bed, because she thinks I'm gay.

I love the idea of ""the one"" but I actually believe that there isn't a Miss Right. There are 12,000 Miss Rights out there and it's all timing.

I look at it as something I'll look back on my whole life and how we all kicked butt.

I guess it was around April (1997) that I realized the level, the severity of the problem that I was having, ... And I'm really proud that I kind of stepped up to the bat and took care of it. For me, it was a no-brainer. It was just -- this is obviously what I have to go do.

I realized by the time I turned 30, which happened this year, that I would be going out with girls and they would think I was really funny, but I would know absolutely nothing about them. I decided that's just not the way to go. I have tried to listen more and get to know the person I'm with.

I certainly wear my heart on my sleeve, and I think that comes out in the characters that I play. There's a yearning, or something, that comes out of me that people relate to.

I have never really lived with anyone in my adult years. I just read my sports ticker. And 50 Shades of Grey.

Women always think that I'm Chandler, so if I don't joke around for half an hour they think that something's wrong. Then I explain that I don't have comedy writers scripting everything I'm saying at this particular dinner.

Ninety percent of video game AI really is pretty damn bad. I think that's actually why it's so much fun to shoot things. Because the AI is so bad and the characters are so annoying.

I don't need to be reminded that I was on 'Friends.' I remember - some of it, anyway.

I am fine with the fact that some of my hair is gray. If it was all gray overnight, that would be a scary thing.

If I hadn't had the experience of being famous, I would have searched for it my whole life. I would have just gone on and on trying to find it.

I'd say that on 'Friends' my character was the guy bouncing around the room. I'm no longer that guy, necessarily, in my life. I used to be. But I'm not now.

I gravitate towards sort of broken characters who try to be better people.

I know Chandler is similar to me. But if you watched my life for a week, there would be many more boring parts.

When people try to take [smoking] away from me I say, 'hey, I stopped everything else.' But, I have to battle that one, too.

I play a guy who is 40. And I am a very good actor, because I'm 41.

If I could walk into the 'Friends' audition again and go or not go, I have to say it's 50-50.

As an actor, being on autopilot is the worst thing possible.

I used to spend a lot of time just thinking about myself, thinking that the party started when I showed up.

In television or a movie I bring my own ego and consequently can mess up. In the theatre I learnt very quickly to shut up and listen. Now I am able to get out of my own way.

I got sober because I was worried I was going to die next year.

I never really thought of myself as a physical comedian. But when I was a kid, I used to, you know, pretend to trip over things to make girls laugh in school and stuff like that. So I kind of learned how to fall without hurting yourself.

I would like you all to give me a round of applause as I have not crashed my car in over 15 months.

I was like: I'm going to ask her [Julia Roberts] out but I'm going to be very nervous about it. Then she said yes, I got even more nervous.

I have what I like to call a 'chinneck.' My chin just flows rather easily into my neck.

I'm making plans to go away for a month to focus on my sobriety and to continue my life in recovery. Please enjoy making fun of me on the world wide web.

It's tough to have a movie-star persona when you're on a show as successful as 'Friends.'

Like, my house has a nice view, because, you know, I was on 'Friends.'

I used to believe in a "Ms. Right", but now i know there is like 4 million "Ms. Rights" and it is just a matter of which one you meet first.

I've been on a show before where I was on a billboard and then, after like three or four weeks, they took the billboard down and replaced it with nothing. Took my face down and put a white board up.

I'm very, very jealous of guys who just go and decide to party and then can work the next day.

I'm glad that life isn't like a Christmas song, because if my friends and I were building a snowman and it suddenly came alive when we put a hat on it, I'd probably freak and stab it to death with an icicle.

'The Whole Nine Yards' I liked right away. It was kind of a dark comedy at first. And just the idea of being in a movie with Bruce Willis was pretty exciting.

Well, I was lucky enough to be involved in about 19 failures at an early age, so I'm realistic about the success I'm having and how quickly it can go away. What's important is to be smart about it.

I certainly like the rumour that I was the father of Elizabeth Hurley's baby. It made me think I could impregnate women in a different way to everyone else. Elizabeth and I were never alone in a room together, so I must be a very powerful man indeed. Actually, I'm thinking of suing the baby!

I think we need to educate our doctors about addiction.

I can tell if someone is talking to me because I'm on 'Friends' or cause they just think I'm neat. You know I don't think I've ever spent more than five or ten minutes with somebody who was ogling me because they recognized me from the show.

I've just found out there are pages on the internet dedicated to whether I'm gay or not.

So I'm reading a book on my new iPad, but can't the iPad read it for me? Do I have to do everything?

There are two sides to being pigeonholed. There's, 'Oh, no, I'm going to be Chandler for the rest of my life,' but there's also the fact that getting to play Chandler opened up doors to me. It's now my job to find things that shake it up a little bit.

Vicodin, I got addicted to that little pill. The reason I dont talk about it too much in the press is because it isnt funny, and I love to be funny in interviews. If you joke about that period in your life, it doesnt seem right.

As for my personal life, I'd love to start a family of my own. I think I'd make a great dad, and I think shortly I would make a great husband.

I don't have a very 'masculine' taste in music. I get a lot of heat from my friends about that.

Chandler's the guy everybody thinks will do well with women, but he thinks too much and says the wrong thing.

When I was younger, I used humour as a tool to avoid getting too serious with people - if there was deep emotional stuff going on, then I would crack a joke to defuse the situation.

To be a comedian, you have to have some darkness behind it. I certainly draw on my past, and it helps.

I think if you look back at all those great comedies on television in the past, it's all lovable losers that gathered together - 'Taxi' and 'Cheers,' 'Seinfeld' and 'Friends.'

I've been accused of not really paying attention to a sentence unless my name comes up in it twice.

I was a guy who wanted to become famous. There was steam coming out of my ears, I wanted to be famous so badly. You want the attention, you want the bucks, and you want the best seat in the restaurant. I didn't think what the repercussions would be.

I always have the same thing - which is the fear of not getting a laugh - that I've had from the time I was a kid; obsessing over, 'This joke doesn't quite work, we've got to get this right.' I was always like that, whether I was a member of a six-person ensemble or whether I'm the center of a show.

To me, writing is remembering something funny that happened, or maybe something I said seven years ago.

My sense of style is an old Polo shirt, jeans and, unfortunately for the longest time, white running shoes, which was not attractive. The one thing I've learned about clothes is to ask a girl.

The goal is to have to do the shot again because the camera guy shook a little bit as he was laughing. Without that happening, I'm not happy because there's nothing better for me than a world that everybody's just trying to make each other laugh.

It's not foreign for me to be talking about my problems in circles.