Tom Hanks Quotes

• "As a boy I'd often spend my days biking on riverbeds and arroyos and come home exhausted. I realize now how much I took for granted having the natural world so close at hand. It wasn't until I moved away, first to New York and then to Los Angeles, that I realized how much I missed the outdoors."
• "E-mail is far more convenient than the telephone, as far as I'm concerned. I would throw my phone away if I could get away with it."
• "From now on we live in a world where man has walked on the Moon. It's not a miracle; we just decided to go."
• "Growing up in northern California has had a big influence on my love and respect for the outdoors. When I lived in Oakland, we would think nothing of driving to Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz one day and then driving to the foothills of the Sierras the next day."
• "I do the work that I think is absolutely fascinating. There's not nearly as much distraction for me now as there used to be."
• "I love what I do for a living, it's the greatest job in the world, but you have to survive an awful lot of attention that you don't truly deserve and you have to live up to your professional responsibilities and I'm always trying to balance that with what is really important."
• "I must say that I do wrestle with the amount of money I make, but at the end of the day what am I gonna say? I took less money so Rupert Murdoch could have more?"
• "I will entertain anything; it doesn't matter. You know, it's not obviously about the price, it's not about who, it's kind of about when and what. It's material, that's all."
• "I would not want to live in a country that would have me as a leader in any sort of political bent."
• "If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. It's the hard that makes it great."
• "If you have to have a job in this world, a high-priced movie star is a pretty good gig."
• "My favorite traditional Christmas movie that I like to watch is All Quiet on the Western Front. It's just not December without that movie in my house."
• "My kid could get a bad X-ray and I could get a call from the doctor saying I have something growing in my bum and that would change my perspective on everything instantaneously, on what is and what is not important."
• "Prior to Saving Private Ryan I never worked with men. I was always working with some babe, and it was always about falling in love, and it just got turned around. I'm not looking for any particular kind of story. I wait until it comes across my desk."
• "That's what's nice about directing a film and having it done: There's nothing more I can do about it. It's done. That's it. All I can do is let it go and hope that people are kind to it."
• "The year I was born, 1956, was the peak year for babies being born, and there are more people essentially our age than anybody else. We could crush these new generations if we decided too."
• "There is something basic about protecting land by taking it off the market. People should be able to enjoy where they live while at the same time protect the plants and animals around them."
• "There was nothing to react to except wind and trees [in Cast Away]. It was like making a silent movie."
• "There's a difference between solitude and loneliness. I can understand the concept of being a monk for a while."
• "What we're doing with Band of Brothers is trying to put it into human terms, so it is not just a flickering, black and white myth on a screen, it is a resonant story. I want the audience to recognize themselves in these men. They're not just mythic heroes."
• "You know, I'm just waiting for the moment when I throw up in the back seat of the limo on my way to a premiere."
• "I would not want to live in a country that would have me as a leader in any sort of political bent."
• "We don't have a host and it's hard to vote yourself off the island when you're the only one on it. (Comparing movie Castaway with TV show Survivor)"
• "I must say that I do wrestle with the amount of money I make, but at the end of the day what am I gonna say? I took less money so Rupert Murdoch could have more?"
• "Life is like a box of chocolates.You never know what you're gonna get! - (from the movie Forrest Gump)"
• "I don't know. People always think that there has got to be a dark side to everyone, a closet with skeletons, demons under the bed. People think all kinds of things about one another. They feel compelled to make up fears and false assumptions about their closest friends. Truth is, I'll never know all there is to know about you just as you will never know all there is to know about me. Humans are by nature too complicated to be understood fully. So, we can choose either to approach our fellow human beings with suspicion or to approach them with an open mind, a dash of optimism and a great deal of candour."