Matt Damon quotes:

Bond is part of the system. He's an imperialist and a misogynist, and he laughs at killing people, and he sits there slugging martinis. It'll never be the same thing as this, because Bourne is a guy who is against the establishment, who is paranoid and on the run. I just think fundamentally they're just very different things.

Being known as a writer did change the relationships I had with directors. The rap on actors is that they always want to inflate their parts. But when directors know you write screenplays and have a different view of things, you really get invited into the huddle in a much fuller way. And those collaborations end in friendships.

Now that I have kids, I'm probably more overprotective than I've ever been. My wife's nickname for me is 'red alert.' I sometimes check just to see if the kids are breathing. But I try not to be a helicopter parent.

I fell in love with a civilian. Not an actress and not a famous actress at that. Because then the attention doesn't double - it grows exponentially. Because then suddenly everybody wants to be in your bedroom. But I don't really give them anything.

My mother is a professor of early childhood education. When I was two she would say she knew I was going to be an actor.

I started really young, like 12 or 13, and then I started doing school plays. We had a really good drama department, so the kind of drama-geek stigma wasn't really there in my high school.

As for poker, I've stayed away from that, even though when I was in Vegas for Ocean's Eleven, I would get accosted by these guys begging me to play. They just want to take my money. They see me, think 'actor' and see some easy money.

Right before 'The Bourne Identity' came out, I hadn't been offered a movie in a year.

Fame is really strange. One day you're not famous, and then the next day you are, and the odd thing is that you know intellectually that nothing in the world is different. What mattered to you yesterday are the same things that matter today, and the rules all still apply - yet everyone looks at you differently.

If anybody wanted to photograph my life, they'd get bored in a day. 'Heres Matt at home learning his lines. Here's Matt researching in aisle six of his local library'. A few hours of that and they'd go home.

I've passed on a lot of huge-money jobs. Money doesn't enter into the decision-making. If I do a big blockbuster, it's about how big an audience you'll get and where you can take them.

I found myself getting more publicly shy when the gala events and big crowds started. Some people embrace it. To me, it's not worth enough to risk my private life being public.

As a struggling actor, you're not looking for parts that define you; you're just looking for work.

My parents divorced when I was young but I was brought up in two really loving households. I didn't have a contentious relationship with my mom or dad.

I'm becoming far more interested in just functionality and making sure my body is as strong as it can be so I can swing my kids around and not worry about aches and pains.

I love shooting, when the character is interesting and the script is interesting, but the research beforehand is really fun. The whole process makes me anxious and restless, and I have trouble sleeping, just trying to figure out the character.

The only sci-fi movie that I've ever been offered that, had circumstances been different, I would have definitely done, was 'Avatar.' And I literally couldn't do it because of my schedule. But listening to James Cameron talk about 'Avatar' was so fascinating. Because he literally invented the world in his mind - and it literally existed.

That's the way this business works: if your movies do well at the box office, you will be offered more movies. It doesn't matter if you're a nice guy or you're a prick. If your movies do well, there's a job waiting for you in Hollywood. It's not any more complicated than that.

I never wanted to do the same kind of movies over and over anyway, so my theory on it all is I'm just gonna try and dodge the label and keep doing what I am doing.

The very first big photo shoot I ever did was with Bruce Weber. I couldn't believe this guy was taking my picture, so when he told me to get in the bathtub, I just did. It's only now, looking back, that I realise, you don't have to do everything people tell you.

I'd love to be a dad. I hope I'd be great at it. That's every man's fear, yet his most important job.

Some people get into this business and they're so afraid to lose anything. They try to protect their position like clinging to a beachhead. These actors end up making really safe choices. I never wanted to go that route. If I go down, I'm going down swinging.

If I had a bucket list, I'd say raising my four girls to be strong, good women would be No. 1,

The thing that I like about Germany is that Germans are so much like us. It's not like going to some other countries, where the differences are overwhelming and you walk around in a fog. Germans are so similar to Americans.

I've been left alone, even by the paparazzi, because what sells is sex and scandal. Absent that, they really don't have much interest in you. I'm still married, still working, still happy.

I didn't grow up with great privilege, nor did I grow up wanting for anything. I was a middle-class kid and, relative to the rest of the world, that's great wealth.

I think it's still hard for me to turn down work if it's really good because for so many years I was so desperate to get a job and couldn't and so it's kind of an anathema for me to turn down work.

I honestly if I get a vacation I'm gonna go and sit on my couch in New York cause that's the one place I haven't been for a very long time.

I believe a solid, really strong middle-class is the key to making the country in the best way.

It's just better to be yourself than to try to be some version of what you think the other person wants.

The better the actor, the less you know about his life. I mean, nobody's better than De Niro and you don't know anything about him, right?

It's an objective fact, that if you want to solve some of these huge, kind of bigger problems of extreme poverty, you have to include the women. They're the ones who will get it done.

It's better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody.

Any moron with a pack of matches can start a fire. Raining down sulfur takes a huge level of endurance. Mass genocide is the most exhausting activity one can engage in, next to soccer.

If you're just an actor you're reactive. You're saying, "Well, I hope Hollywood gives me a role, or gives me a chance at a role," whereas if you can generate your own content, then you can go where you want to go.

We're here for such a short time. When your great-great-grandkids study history, don't you want them to be proud that you were part of the solution?

I should have done it years ago. It's amazing I didn't even want cigarettes anymore.

As a struggling actor, youre not looking for parts that define you; youre just looking for work.

My heart goes out to the people of the city of Boston. My thoughts and prayers are with the families who lost loved ones in such a senseless and heartless way.

Most films and directors lose their nerve and want to indicate [emotions] a bit more, to show that their story is clear. I'm not saying that's a good thing; as an actor its anathema to good acting, but to have someone with the confidence to say that should I be utterly natural and minimalist is great.

I've gotten much better at multi-tasking. It's hard, though. But, writing a script is not totally focused. You're taking little breaks, all the time. If a kid runs in, you give 'em a horsey ride. It's a pretty fluid process.

My wife is my soul mate. I can't imagine being without her.

Before the days of video village a director should stand right next to the camera, look with his naked eye and if he sees something that is real to him, he'd look up at the [camera] operator and if he gives the look to indicate he'd seen it to, then you print and you'd move on.

I'm always cautious about overstepping any boundaries. At the end of the day, it's a director's medium, and if they don't want to hear from me I just step back.

Now I feel I have an unspoken deal with the paparazzi: 'I won't do anything publicly interesting if you agree not to follow me.'

You will never solve poverty without solving water and sanitation.

Eventually stardom is going to go away from me. It goes away from everybody and all you have in the end is to be able to look back and like the choices you made.

The first time I smoked was at home with my mother and stepfather; they were like, If you are going to do this, we'd rather you did this with us.

Poverty feeds into the clean-water crisis, which contributes to hunger, and so on. There's undeniable interconnectivity among these issues. Just one of these problems can be deadly on its own, but in the most disadvantaged areas there is a perfect storm of problems. And it takes its greatest toll on children.

I think what's important for kids to know is that your decisions here on earth matter, your behavior matters and how you treat other people matters.

Success is not something I've wrapped my brain around. If people go to those movies, then yes, that's true, big-time success. If not, it's much ado about nothing.

If anybody wanted to photograph my life, they'd get bored in a day.

I'm not Brad Pitt or George Clooney. Those guys walk into a room and the room changes. I think there's something more... not average, but everyman about me.

Still, the change is nearly indescribable - going from total obscurity to walking down a street in New York and having everybody turn and look; to feel the temperature of a room change when I walked in.

The values that I have are the values I was raised with, from where I'm from, which is a middle-class place. So that informs everything about me, my politics and all that stuff. I mean, politically, I vote against my own self-interest at every election. I actively ask these people to raise my taxes.

As somebody who makes his living in the movie business and wants to contribute to it, I think that the best chance I have of doing that is just consistently working with great directors.

If you are writing a story and trying to draw an audience to come and hear you tell it, it's got to in some way relate to them. Who wants to come and hear about your specific problems? It's not therapy - it's supposed to be a communal piece of entertainment.

I think what makes a good actor's director is the same thing that makes a good director. Acting is just one of the trades necessary to make a movie.

Our kids are growing up with more privilege than we had; that's true for most of my friends in L.A. I don't know any actor who grew up with any particular privilege, so everyone wrestles with this. And I think, a lot of times, it's about being patient with your kids.

...All you have in the end is to look back and like the choices you've made.

[Americans] can't understand that the water in our toilet is cleaner than 880 million have access to.

All parents are trying to balance. Look, I'm lucky in the sense that I can control my hours. I can choose my jobs, and not everybody has that choice. But I definitely, it's a family decision every time I take a job.

And you know, we were talking about American identity, and where we've come from and where we are and where we're headed. We knew that we wanted to have a hopeful ending and we wanted it to be pro-community, and a pro-democracy type of movie.

As actors, we react to the material that's out there, and I probably just react more strongly to things that I feel will have some social value.

Clean water is only as far away as the nearest tap, and there are taps everywhere. There's a faucet everywhere. But the reality is, the water in our toilets is cleaner than the water that most people are drinking.

For a lot of actors, our biggest fear is that we're going to start talking about things we don't fully understand and sound like idiots.

For Ripley I learned to play some songs on the piano, and I never really played them again.

Generally, the bigger the budget, the less interesting the characters become.

He's famous for being obsessive about details.

History is change happening one person at a time.

I can't think of any more important value to instill in our children than the desire to help others. I feel strongly about setting an example for them. Real problems can be solved by the next generation if we instill in them the right values.

I don't see as many movies as I used to. Or, I should say, as many movies as I would like to.

I grew up in and the teachers. I think I was very lucky. I think I had a lot of social capital, and so when I found myself in this position of influence, I just - then I started to engage a bit with some of the problems in the world and realize that I could actually have an impact.

I need to know if she [Sarah Palin] thinks dinosaurs were here four thousand years ago... because she's going to have the nuclear code.

I think it's something that the citizenry needs to be vigilant about - participating in democracy, and that includes issues like what's going on and how much secrecy and transparency there should be. That's an on-going thing - in a democracy you want checks and balances and oversight, but you need a covert agency to protect the country. It's a very tricky balance and I think it changes as the world changes and I think we all need to be mindful of that.

I think marrying somebody who's not a celebrity, it just takes a lot of the pressure off.

I think what makes a good actor's director is somebody who understands what I'm doing and is respectful of it, but who also has a vision and is directing me toward their vision in a way that feels productive.

I was never that much a focus of interest that I became a 'thing' at an earlier point in my career. I'm aware of having become a 'thing' now, which doesn't give me a lot of pleasure.

I'll play Pretty Pretty Princess with you if you just let me watch a little bit of March Madness.

I'd had people say, 'You'll enjoy being famous for a week, and you'll never enjoy it again'. But I don't think I had that week. I may have been working and missed that moment.

If Brad Pitt walked down the street, cars would crash into each other. I'm really lucky not to have to deal with that.

If there's an idea I think is really good and I feel like I can write it, then I'll do it.

If we listen to the better angels of our nature, there are creative and good solutions to serious problems.

If you can't help people, then what is the point of being successful?

If you work at something, you get better at it.

If your movies don't perform, they just stop calling you.

It was shameful and embarrassing that there were two years in a row without a single actor of color nominated. That's insane.

It's intuitive in terms of when I read a piece of material or I hear about a project. I'm a writer, so I've written movies. I've read at this point thousands and thousands and thousands of screenplays. So if something gets me, then I don't ignore that.

It's pretty easy to kind of lose your way. Having kids is really helpful. They kind of disabuse you of the notion of your greatness pretty quickly.

It's usually the exact same three things which are, the Scripts, the Director and the Role those are the three things I look for and really any two of them, If I get two of them that's usually enough, but definitely those are the things I look for.

It's very frustrating [ to work under director's control], not just because you're getting rejected constantly, but also because you're at a time in your life where you have an enormous amount of creative energy, and there's no way to express it. That's why a lot of people get into drinking or drugs or whatever.

I've been really lucky. I'll completely forget that I'm a celebrity. And then something will happen, and I'll go, 'Oh, right.'

Liberty is a soul's right to breathe.

Life is on the wire. The rest is just waiting.

Listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you ARE the sucker.

Oftentimes when I'm deciding to do a movie, the main thing is really, that I look at, is the director. I've come to feel that more and more. The more movies I've done and the older I've - the more experience I have, I always knew it was a director's medium, and I always said that.

Our problem is civil obedience

Paranoid is what people who are trying to take advantage call you in an effort to get you to drop your guard.

Part of the American ethos is that you want to leave something better for your kids than you had and I know that my parents felt that way and I know that my grandparents felt that way and everybody worked hard so that their kids had a better chance. I just don't want to be the first generation that doesn't do that.

People do things in the names of good, and in the name of ideals, but the world isn't that simple. So they end up doing things that aren't necessarily good. Even if they think they're doing the right thing, but when viewed from a different perspective they can look barbaric and crazy.

Please find out what you can do to make a difference. Take five minutes to educate yourself on an issue you didn't know about before. Then tell somebody else.

Sending our kids in my family to private school was a big, big, big deal. And it was a giant family discussion. But it was a circular conversation, really, because ultimately we don't have a choice. I mean, I pay for a private education and I'm trying to get the one that most matches the public education that I had, but that kind of progressive education no longer exists in the public system. It's unfair.

Some people get into this business and they're so afraid to lose anything. They try to protect their position like clinging to a beachhead. These Actor s end up making really safe choices. I never wanted to go that route. If I go down, I'm going down swinging. I know that's the way Heath Ledger feels and Ben Affleck feels the same way, too. We want to take the big swings...

Some people just see the glory and they don't want to know about the story.

Sometimes all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage

The director's in charge of every single decision [in film]. It's a dictatorship.It's a benevolent dictatorship, but it's true. It's every single shot. There's nothing arbitrary.

The ideal life is you don't sell a single magazine, nobody's interested, but they want to come see your movie. Because that gives you true freedom.

The whole thrust of theatre is different, just because the writing is so much more respected in a play. Whereas in movies - and having been the writer, I can say from experience - the writer is lower down on the food chain.

There are a lot of things that I really question - the legality of the drone strikes, these NSA revelations. Jimmy Carter came out and said we don't live in a democracy. That's a little intense when an ex-president says that. So you know, he's got some explaining to do, particularly for a constitutional law professor.

There are people who appear in the magazines and I don't know who they are. I've never seen anything they've done and their careers are over already. They're famous for maybe 10 minutes. Real careers, I think, take a long time to unfold.

There are people who just collect a bunch of footage and then edit it later. You definitely feel more protected when a director is moving on when you've actually felt something happen and you know they're watching intently.

We live in a world, it's very hard for Americans to understand that every 20 seconds a kid dies, a kid under the age of five, right, dies somewhere on the Earth because of lack of access to clean water and sanitation. Every 20 seconds that happens on our planet. It's just very hard for us to relate to.

When you have a child, your relationship with every child in the world changes. It's like you're in a club you didn't know existed before a child came into your life. I believe you should make the world more beautiful for all children in any way that you can.

You know, a one-term president with some balls who actually got stuff done would have been, in the long run of the country, much better.

The only way I can describe it-at the end of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, you know how his heart grows like five times? Everything is full; it's just full all the time.

I usually play characters that are a lot different than me. I mean, I'm never in a fight in a movie and if I'm in them, I'm usually losing.