Ethan Hawke Quotes

Success isn't measured by what you achieve, it's measured by the obstacles you overcome.

Depression is a real demon in the woods for a lot of creative people, you know? It's part of what the documentary is trying to be about for me, finding balance, where the beauty that is attainable in the creative arts can be matched with the scratchy roughness of regular life.

Read. It makes you more intelligent. It’s that simple. We all see the universe through the tiny keyhole of our own eyes, and every book is another keyhole from which you can gaze.

You don't need other people to affirm that you're a valuable person.

If you don't risk doing something foolish, you'll never do anything special.

The older I get, the more obvious it is that you're not really in control of your life, you're a part of a larger wave, no matter who you are.

Life's hard. It's supposed to be. If we didn't suffer, we'd never learn anything.

The older I get, the more I realize how rare it is to meet a kindred spirit.

Don't you find it odd," she continued, "that when you're a kid, everyone, all the world, encourages you to follow your dreams. But when you're older, somehow they act offended if you even try.

Everything is so finite but that’s what makes our time and specific moments so important.

Time is what creates trust.

There is no trick to writing a believable love story, a heartbreaking scene or real-sounding dialogue. All you need is to tell the truth. It’s always heartbreaking.

I met a lot of famous people when I was about 24. And none of them seemed very appealing. And so I didn't know why I would struggle to be that kind of person.

There's something about knowing life is finite that makes it so precious.

Give your heart to everybody you meet. The rest is pretense.

The most creative and most periods of my life that were, had the most growth, were the ones where I was perceived to be failing. Perceived success is a, is really hard 'cause it doesn't really, it's not asking you to grow, see failure is asking you to grow.

Happiness is in the doing not in getting what you want.

I kill flies, I eat meat, you know, whatever.

The truth is that the more you get paid, the less freedom you have. They never pay you for nothing.

Nothing teaches you like getting leveled. And I got leveled in my early 30s. Nothing went exactly the way I thought it would.

If you can channel the best part of you that is bigger than yourself, where it’s not about your ego and not about getting ahead, then you can have fun and you aren’t jealous of others. You see other people's talent as another branch of your own. You can keep it rooted in joy. Life is long and there are plenty of opportunities to make mistakes. The point of it all is to learn.

I got to work with Robert DeNiro once and it was a strange experience. Gwyneth Paltrow and I were doing Great Expectations movie together and we were complaining about what a mediocre film experience it was. DeNiro showed up on set and all of a sudden the director got better, the director of photography got better - everybody got more interested and excited. DeNiro isn't waiting for other people to create the environment that he wants, he brings it along with him.

Friends can hurt you, but the possibility of pain with lovers is so much greater because your expectations are so high. You don't ask as much of your friends.

I have totally hitched my wagon to the horse of storytelling, and the idea that none of us know why we're born, or why we're gonna die, or what we're planted here, or what's on the other side of the galaxy, or when time began, or when time end. The whole nature of reality is pretty up for grabs, really.

If you say to yourself, okay, I will not self-destruct. I don't have to be the most talented person. I don't have to be everybody's best friend, I don't have to be liked, I don't have to be successful, well, one thing I will not do is self-destruct. If you take that out, your chances for success just went up like 800 percent.