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Quotes by Tom Hanks

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.
– Tom Hanks
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.
– Tom Hanks
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.
– Tom Hanks
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.
– Tom Hanks
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.
– Tom Hanks
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.
– Tom Hanks
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?
– Tom Hanks
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.
– Tom Hanks
I would not want to live in a country that would have me as a leader in any sort of political bent.
– Tom Hanks
If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. It's the hard that makes it great.
– Tom Hanks
If you have to have a job in this world, a high-priced movie star is a pretty good gig.
– Tom Hanks
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.
– Tom Hanks
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.
– Tom Hanks
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.
– Tom Hanks
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.
– Tom Hanks
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.
– Tom Hanks
There is a huge amount of stuff I'm simply not available for. If they want to make a movie in a certain amount of time and I just can't, I don't even want to see that stuff because if it's really great, I'd be bummed out. So actually I think I say no to a lot less stuff than I used to simply because I don't see it.
– Tom Hanks
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.
– Tom Hanks
There was nothing to react to except wind and trees [in Cast Away]. It was like making a silent movie.
– Tom Hanks
There's a difference between solitude and loneliness. I can understand the concept of being a monk for a while.
– Tom Hanks
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.
– Tom Hanks
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.
– Tom Hanks
You cannot look up at the night sky on the Planet Earth and not wonder what it's like to be up there amongst the stars. And I always look up at the moon and see it as the single most romantic place within the cosmos.
– Tom Hanks
Tweeting is like sending out cool telegrams to your friends once a week.
– Tom Hanks
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.
– Tom Hanks
The nature of the movies is different than it was five years ago, and they're all driven by the possibilities of CGI, which means you can make anything happen on screen that you can possibly desire.
– Tom Hanks
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.
– Tom Hanks
Reading a script is usually as exciting as reading a boilerplate legal document, so when you read one that makes you feel as if you're seeing the movie, you know it's something different.
– Tom Hanks
No journalist has ever been in my house and no photographs have ever been taken of where I live. I don't parade my family out for display, which is the way it will stay.
– Tom Hanks
Movie-making is telling a story with the best technology at your disposal.
– Tom Hanks
It's just as hard... staying happily married as it is doing movies.
– Tom Hanks
It's always a combination of physics and poetry that I find inspiring. It's hard to wrap your head around things like the Hubble scope.
– Tom Hanks
If you look at romantic comedies as pieces of commerce, the audience is looking for wish fulfillment.
– Tom Hanks
I've made over 20 movies, and 5 of them are good.
– Tom Hanks
I do not want to admit to the world that I can be a bad person. It is just that I don't want anyone to have false expectations. Moviemaking is a harsh, volatile business, and unless you can be ruthless, too, there's a good chance that you are going to disappear off the scene pretty quickly.
– Tom Hanks
Everybody has something that chews them up and, for me, that thing was always loneliness. The cinema has the power to make you not feel lonely, even when you are.
– Tom Hanks
But look, I was born in 1956, the peak year for births in US history. I think I'm very representative of many of the thought processes my generation have been through and, by and large, people of my age have had their imprint planted on the consciousness of western society for a long time.
– Tom Hanks
At the end of the day it's got to be a good movie, it's got to be a funny movie, and it's got to make people think, 'Hey, I couldn't have spent my time any better.'
– Tom Hanks
As long as you as an individual... can convince yourself that in order to move forward as best you can you have to be optimistic, you can be described as 'one of the faithful,' one of those people who can say, 'Well, look, something's going to happen! Let's just keep trying. Let's not give up.
– Tom Hanks
As a young man, even if I was going to see a play or a film by myself, I didn't feel like I was alone. There was something that was unfolding up there that brought me into it. And I recognised that. For those two hours, it made me feel like I belonged to something really good.
– Tom Hanks
And I'm not apolitical - I'm very specific in my politics. But a lot of the time it's nobody's business unless you're over at my house having dinner.
– Tom Hanks