Tom Hanks Quotes - Page 5

For some people, I will be Forrest Gump for the rest of my life. But that's OK; that's a good thing.

All that most parents hope is that their children are happy, funny, well adjusted, and have a passion for something in their lives. What would negate everything is if the next generation that we're responsible for has a passionless existence. And that's cause for occasional sleepless nights.

I know the Pope is opposed to the use of condoms. All I can say is, I am a spiritual man and I've been happily married for 21 years. I don't even know what a condom is anymore.

The filmmakers aren't running the studios anymore. Sometimes people who like films are making them, but by and large, they have to go report quarterly earnings and all that stuff. The competition is so huge that it's very hard to get people to show up to see any movie in the theater, much less an original one that isn't a version of something else they saw.

The Pixar people continuously amaze me. They come up with something that actually looks as though it takes place in this happy, real-world. Every plot line is not just plausible, but oddly authentic. The stories are full of adventure, humor and love. The characters are written with great human dimension. I don't know how they do it but they astound me.

I try to do what I call the three E's - educate, entertain, and enlighten. If you don't entertain, no one will show up. But you also have to educate, because people want to discover specific things about a world unlike their own - whether it's how hard it is to go to the moon or how scary it is to be on Omaha Beach.

I always wanted to play Lestrade of Scotland Yard 'cause he's a buffoon that gets to wear a uniform. I thought that would be fun.

There was nothing to react to except wind and trees [in Cast Away]. It was like making a silent movie.

The nature of motion capture is only going to work for certain films. It's not going to put any other type of movies out of business.

I've talked to a number of actors who have gained weight for roles, and just the sheer physical toll it puts on one's knees and shoulders - no one wants to do it again. I'm 57 and I don't think I'm going to take on any job or go on vacation again and see to it that I can gain 30 pounds.

It was incredibly cheesy set with torches [TV's Survivor] - it looked like the lobby of the Enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland. And here as some guy pulling names out of a coconut, and I said, 'This is the thing that has made American mass media stop in their tracks?

The truth is that everyone pays attention to who's number one at the box office. And none of it matters, because the only thing that really exists is the connection the audience has with a movie.

I'm not looking for anything. If you start looking for something specific, then you take providence right out of it. You can't completely control it. Otherwise you'd make the same kind of movie over and over again, which some people say I've done.

'Forrest Gump' was great, it was fabulous. It lasted much longer than anybody thought, and brought me a degree of attention that no human being on the face of the planet deserves.

If not for John Adams leading a revolution against Great Britain...This would be the BAFTAs.

I would not want to live in a country that would have me as a leader in any sort of political bent.

I've made over 20 movies, and 5 of them are good.

It's just as hard staying happily married as it is doing movies.

I'm lucky enough to be able to make only movies I'm interested in seeing. That has to be an instinctive thrust. The audience knows when you're faking it. They can hang any kind of moniker they want on me.

Once humankind has been some place and found it entrancing, they always go back, I think in the history of the human race, the moon has been the first place we've gone to and said, 'OK, we don't need to go back there again.

Being politically correct means always having to say you're sorry. Believe me, the power and pleasure and the emotion of this moment is a constant speed of light.

But I also think all of the great stories in literature deal with loneliness. Sometimes it's by way of heartbreak, sometimes it's by way of injustice, sometimes it's by way of fate. There's an infinite number of ways to examine it.

As a boy Id 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 wasnt until I moved away, first to New York and then to Los Angeles, that I realized how much I missed the outdoors.

Mass-market movies have become about one thing. They kind of declare themselves right off the bat. . . . But when I go to see (a film), I want to be surprised. I want to see something I never expected. And when you get that, it should be celebrated.

Directing is a constant test of your communicative powers. You're constantly trying to explain people your vision of what you want and steer these tiny little details into a cohesive thing.