Shia LaBeouf quotes:

I turned down a scholarship to Yale. The problem with college is that there's a tendency to mistake preparation for productivity. You can prepare all you want, but if you never roll the dice you'll never be successful.

I'm not an Adonis, that's for damn sure. I've never really thought of myself that way, and it doesn't matter to me. My favorite actors aren't Adonises. Dustin Hoffman is a flawed-looking man; he's amazing to me. Tom Hanks is flawed-looking; people love him. Same with Gene Hackman.

Talent is to actors what luck is to card players. It's not really anything; it's just a fictitious word that people have created and labeled things. Talent is like, you know, I never really believed in talent, I believed in drive and determination and preparation, but talent is sort of like luck.

I understand why marriages break up over golf. I can't even talk about my own handicap because it's too upsetting.

I go to sleep at night, and I feel like I just dreamed the whole day.

I like the dark, mysterious, maybe even gothic type girls. They have to have a good personality too! I'm very picky!

There's only so far you can take a relationship before you got to get into things that are too serious or over the top.

I drink protein shakes nonstop - three or four a day - and I run a lot, so you get rid of the bad carbs and keep the rest so you have the energy to make it through.

When a gust of wind hits a broken bone, you feel it.

There's something about studying body language and non-spoken emotion - I know the innate response. But to really study it like a science would be fun.

I used to dirt bike a lot. I can't do that anymore. Can't eat a whole lot of chocolate anymore, either. I can't be in 'Indiana Jones' and be a fatso!

My neighborhood was rough, but I live a great life now. I don't fight that much now. I don't look for it anyway, but if someone hits your mother, whether you're a star, an accountant, or an astronaut or anything... I mean it's your mother, so I lost my mind.

I'm a little territorial and defensive. I don't like having my space invaded.

My first car, I got it in an auction at my temple. It was an '86 Volvo that I got for 500 bucks, and then wound up throwing $10,000 into the stereo system and put TVs in the foot rests. It was the most ridiculous Volvo you'd ever seen, but I had never had money before and I was out of my mind.

Now my dad is with me, traveling with me and a big part of this whole thing is I like to mix it up a little bit, you know. Who gets to take their father on a private jet across the country and stay in first class hotels? So we're enjoying it, but I'd stop if it's not possible.

I've had to deal with all different types of situations - positive and negative and extremes of both.

The best movies are simple.

If people perceive you as a good actor then they'll wish for you to be a good actor and they'll root for you when they watch you, but if you come out and you're going to clubs every night people don't root for you anymore.

I didn't know my dad for a long time. My dad was on drugs and my dad was at the VA Hospital, my dad was off in his own world selling drugs or using them or there would be crack heads in the house or whatever it would be.

I don't even really know what it is I do for a living - the level of insecurity is very, very high. You're making a lot of money, getting a lot of accolades and positive criticism for something where you don't even know what you're doing.

If you're trying to learn how to act from a class, you're analyzing the teachers' movements and their intricacies, and it becomes like a pantomime of you wanting to be them, and that's wrong. Literature is an easier way to study acting, because then you can take any kind of spin. It's your own imagination, and your own version of it.

To be able to sit in Donald Trump's apartment and talk about the future of corporate real estate was amazing.

My family's lineage is five generations of artists who never made it.

So it's kind of nervous to be in this situation, but at the same time you look at all those actors and the work that they've done, I've been in bigger films than all of them and still kept my integrity and still kept my respect.

I hated golf when we first started, but a big part of the training process was falling in love with this sport, so I went on tour with the UCLA Team.

All of the things that have happened in my life have been self-propelled. I can't blame anybody else or point a finger at anybody.

I don't like having my space invaded.

I'm a call-sheet junkie. I love being on set. So, the hardest thing for me is dealing with all this idle time. That's when I get into trouble.

Knowledge about the economy, ideas about capitalism and government, the future of the world and geopolitics were things I was never really interested in.

I'm kind of bi-polar.

Every time you make a movie it's an adventure.

I was always raised on cowboy films, and then when I could start making choices about the movies I wanted to watch I found myself wanting to watch gangster films which were slightly more sophisticated than the baseline stuff that was in westerns.

Clubs are so lame. Nobody even dances at these clubs. They stand around and get drunk and they schmooze. There is no enjoyment factor.

I don't have many actor friends.

I never get in trouble.

I come from divorce. I'm only doing marriage once. It's not a game for me.

I like messing around, and I like working with artists who I respect.

You can't have bank holding companies acting as hedge funds. You can't have them taking a million-dollar pension plan for Joe Schmo the bus driver and treat it with the same risk appetite that you treat George Soros' pocket money. It's fundamentally ridiculous.

I think I'm prone to not being a good guy in relationships.

We did this two-week boot camp before we filmed the movie. I got to know everybody in the group and we became friends. We got really tight throughout those two weeks.

And yeah, my handicap was down to a 10 when we were at the thick of it. I trained for six or seven months, golfing every day for six hours, seven days a week, with eight trainers. It was intense.

I feel like I'm really honest in my interviews, to a fault. I've lost friends over it. Major friends. And I'm heartbroken about that.

I'm trying to find a way to eat up time without being destructive, 'cause that's my go-to, it seems.

I was in a relationship with a girl I loved for three years. Where do you go after three years? Then you've got to start thinking about other things, and I'm too young to think about those things.

You never really meet a human being until you live with them or know them for awhile, so this is my clown and they understand that and so these interviews don't bother them.

I'd love to go to school and have a normal life, but I don't see any professor at Yale being able to teach me more than Steven Spielberg.

There's no room for being a visionary in the studio system. It literally cannot exist.

Animation has completely changed, and I've always been a big fan.

When people ask me about my story, I just go through the positive stuff: the tent-pole moments, the big landmark checkpoints.

They're very, uh, you know, I don't come from the suburbs and a jolly, Disney type of lifestyle. I come from something totally different. And they're cool and bare minimum so it's not always a money issue for me.

You can't buy back your respect; you can't buy back your career. You only get one, so I don't want to mess that up.

I've learned a great deal about a certain type of filmmaking. But I have ambitions toward another type of filmmaking that I haven't been allowed to engage in yet.

I'm an individual, and I have opinions.

But this is a little different. This is the adult acting. This is a different crowd. It's more work and more good work. That's it. People will have their opinion regardless.

When you look at golf films before us they're all - garbage or satire. A lot of sports films tend to vilify the opposition. Where the opposition becomes this big angry monster, so big you can't beat him.

If I want to party, I'll party at my house.

I think penguins are the most human of all the birds, which may be why people love them. They're cute, they stand upright and they look like they're wearing tuxedos.

To my mind, talent doesn't really exist.

I'm Richie Rich. I land in New York, secretly thinking I'm like the coolest guy in the world.

It's very weird because the 'It' guy usually is not the 'It' guy next year or even a guy that anyone is talking about.

That's one thing I never had to do on a Mike Bay set is sit around and pontificate about the next scene; there's no time for it. You're already in the next scene.

There will always be opportunities to be in love again.

I've never been able to learn from other people's mistakes - I'm not that smart - so I usually learn by trial by fire.

I think, my generation, it's hard to have hope when you got a $700-trillion derivatives debt to pay and a bubble about to explode and $500 trillion worth of GDP.

Every actor chooses their story at the beginning.

Literature is an easier way to study acting, because then you can take any kind of spin.

I'm a video game fan, and I always thought it would be cool to be able to control a character.

Oh, I've been in love with every woman I've ever worked with.

Any time you're a type, your career's over.

The comic book world is a tough business.

I'm only going to work now when I'm terrified.

If I could meet my mother and marry her, I would. I would be with my mother now, if she weren't my mother, as sick as that sounds.

People were going to geometry class and I was swimming through vats of chili on 'Even Stevens.' It was like a dream!"

I grew up around a lot of aggressive guys. My parents used to take me to AA meetings when I was very young. So I know aggression, I know insanity.

There's a way to do an acid trip like Harold & Kumar, and there's a way to be on acid. What I know of acting, Sean Penn actually strapped up to that (electric) chair in Dead Man Walking. These are the guys that I look up to.

Old Americana vintage gangster stuff has a fantastical feel; it feels less dirty in a way. It feels like the opera of crime.

This is hands down the biggest, most exciting thing I've ever been involved with in my life. I can only compare it to my Bar Mitzvah.

When you're working with the best of the best, I'm not gonna put that on hold so I can work with people who studied the best of the best.

To be an actor, a true actor, you have to be brokenhearted.

I became a Christian man in a very real way. I could have just said the prayers that were on the page, but it was a real thing that really saved me. And you can't identify unless you're really going through it. It's a full-blown exchange of heart, a surrender of control.

Respected, I almost want to be revered, that's what I'm chasing.

People were going to geometry class and I was swimming through vats of chili on 'Even Stevens.' It was like a dream!

There's a form of selling out. It's necessary. You have to become edible for people in Texas. You have to become edible for the Christian right, for mass audiences.

I didn't jump onto anyone else's coattail and ride their wave.

And if you're a golfer and you watch a golf film and Matt Damon swing, and it's not great, then you're not going to believe in the golf story, you're not going to believe in the rest of the film. That's the whole movie, so if that swing looks like crap, the movie's crap.

I got to grow up in a situation where drugs were demonic. To watch your dad go through heroin withdrawal is something that would keep you from doing any of that yourself.

Talent is to actors what luck is to card players. Its not really anything; its just a fictitious word that people have created and labeled things. Talent is like, you know, I never really believed in talent, I believed in drive and determination and preparation, but talent is sort of like luck.

People think that their vote counts. They go to college, and everything gets mixed up. People stop caring, ... They raise the gas prices, but what the Everyman makes and welfare never seem to keep up. The HMO system is so ridiculous. I'm slightly educated. No one wants to hear what Hilary Duff thinks of the economy.

I don't know, I just want to be happy. I could be in a hole somewhere. Or I could completely lose it and be some hippy living in the woods with my dad.

I'm constantly jumping off cliffs and developing my wings on the way down. ... It's a gamble, a ... spiritual gamble. You are who you choose to be.

I don't have to live this lavish lifestyle.

If I had more recreation time I would be able to step back and reflect on how life has changed. But it has been like a constant... boom, boom, boom, boom, boom!

Sometimes I feel I'm living a meaningless life, and I get frightened.

And I'm not a personality; otherwise I'd be coming out with an album, performing on MTV. All that stuff is possible and I can do that tomorrow. I just have no need.

Agents are used to the parents pimping. They're not used to the kid pimping.

Nobody strives to lose.

Well, you don't make any demands to Steven Spielberg.

If you asked an 18-year-old what they want to do with their life, and the options are 'Transformers' or Lars von Trier, he's probably shipping out for 'Transformers.' If you ask a 26-year-old what he wants to do, 'Transformers' or Lars von Trier, he'd probably pick Lars von Trier. So, my sensibilities are changing as I change.

Look, you're on the set for six months, with someone who's rooting to be attracted to you, and you're rooting to be attracted to them. I never understood the separation of work and life in that situation. But the time I spent with Megan was our own thing.

Probably the sexiest woman I know is my mother.

My humor came from seeing my parents have sex, smoke weed, my mom being naked - just weird hippie stuff, twisted R-rated humor.

I was doing stand up comedy when I was 11, that's how I got started; not because I wanted to do comedy, but because we were broke, living in Echo Park in Downtown Los Angeles, from 1986, I saw the Rodney King riots; my parents didn't really work. But I wanted a new backpack, that's how I got into this business - I wanted a new backpack.

I've been in fights, but that doesn't make me cool or like a tough guy or more interesting actor, I'm not proud of it.

In my parents' generation, rebellion was pop culture. It's not anymore.

Nobody makes movies like Oliver Stone.

I was the only white kid in my neighborhood for most of my youth even in high school, so reverse racism was just as apparent as racism.

I think there's a form of honesty, because I used to be very honest with the press, and then it backfired on me, and I understood it.

What's cool is when you're able to give your audience imagination and you don't have to cage them in like animals.

The hardest thing in acting is going from child actor to adult actor. It's taken me a long time.

I would like to be George Clooney diplomatic. I just don't have the wherewithal yet or the inner serenity.

I wasn't cocky, just confident; I went to an all black school, a white kid.

My mom is at my house every day, and she nags me about everything, especially hygiene.

Adversity has a way of introducing a man to himself.

Latins are into clowns.

At this point I have enough money to live 25 lifetimes. You couldn't spend the money I've accrued now.

I turned down twelve films last year... Huge money films, but I had no respect for the writer or the work.

Actors live dependent on being validated by other people's opinions. I don't understand what it is I do that people want. I don't know what an actor does. I have no credentials. I don't know what I'm doing.

I'm very picky and I'm in a situation where it's a big crossover.

I have a very nappy, curly head.

I'm a little territorial and defensive.