Bill Murray Quotes

I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: 'try being rich first'. See if that doesn't cover most of it. There's not much downside to being rich, other than paying taxes and having your relatives ask you for money. But when you become famous, you end up with a 24-hour job.

I try to be available for life to happen to me.

There must be a bad chromosome somewhere in man that urges him to wound that which he can't conquer, deface that which is more beautiful, misunderstand and befoul the work of another.

People confuse friendship and relaxation. It's incredibly important to be relaxed - you don't have a chance if you're not relaxed. So I try very hard to relax any kind of tension. But friendship is different.

You know how funerals are not for the dead, they're for the living? Bachelor parties are not for the groom, they're for the uncommitted.

I don't have to take this abuse from you
I have hundreds of people waiting in line to abuse me!

Just the very thought of someone my age going to visit old girlfriends had instant appeal.Even women think, 'That would be interesting.' Not comfortable, but interesting. It is not a comfortable film at any point.

Love can be seeing that here we are and there's this world here.

I count on the kindness of strangers.

You know the theory of cell irritability?. If you take an amoeba cell and poke it a thousand times, it will change and then re-form into its original shape. And then, the thousandth time you poke this amoeba, the cell will completely collapse and become nothing. That's kind of what it's like being famous. People say hi, how are you doing, and after the thousandth time, you just get angry; you really pop.

The Army needs leaders the way a foot needs a big toe ...

I don't believe that you can give the same performance every take. It's physically impossible, so why bother? If you don't do what is happening at that moment, then it's not real. Then you're holding something back.

Melancholy is kind of sweet sometimes, I think. It's not a negative thing. It's not a mean thing. It's just something that happens in life, like autumn.

I really don't know what's going to come out of my mouth.

I don't want to have a relationship with someone if I'm not going to work with them.

There's definitely a lot of trash that comes with the prize of being famous. It's a nice gift, but there's a lot of wrapping and paper and junk to cut through. Back then, when a movie came out and people saw you on the street, their reaction was so supercharged that it was scary. It would frighten other people. It used to really rattle me. I mean, everybody would love to have their clothes torn off by a mob of girls, but being screamed at is different.

The truth is, anybody that becomes famous is an ass for a year and a half. You've got to give them a year and a half, two years. They are getting so much smoke blown, and their whole world gets so turned upside down, their responses become distorted. I give everybody a year or two to pull it together because, when it first happens, I know how it is.

No one really wants to admit they are lonely, and it is never really addressed very much between friends and family. But I have felt lonely many times in my life.

I think the only reason I've had the career life that I've had is that someone told me some secrets early on about living. You can do the very best you can when you're very, very relaxed, no matter what it is or what your job is, the more relaxed you are the better you are. That's sort of why I got into acting. I realized the more fun I had, the better I did it. And I thought, that's a job I could be proud of. It's changed my life learning that, and it's made me better at what I do.

Well, the past is gone, I know that. The future isn't here yet, whatever it's going to be. So, all there is, is this. The present. That's it.

All parties are good.

The only way we'll ever know what it's like to be you is if you work your best at being you as often as you can, and keep reminding yourself: That's where home is.

You want my dark side? Have I ever stolen anything? Not so much intentionally. But I don't think it's so much stealing as ... being a part of the flow of the universe. You know, where there's an exchange. It's positive. It's negative. There's an exchange of goods and services

When I feel like I'm stuck, I do something - not like I'm Mother Teresa or anything, but there's someone that's forgotten about in your life, all the time. Someone that could use an 'Attaboy' or a 'How you doin' out there.

Zombies dont mess with other zombies.

I've got kids and that's important. It's funny, you think that there's an expiration date on them and there just isn't.

I kinda like this Jay-Z thing, where he's retired, but he keeps doing shows. I think I beat him to that. If you say you're retired, people don't bother you so much, and then if you want to do something, you can do it.

If you walk up to some random person on the street, grab them by the shoulder, and say 'Did you just see what I saw?!', you'll find that no-one wants to talk to you.

I went to Second City, where you learned to make the other actor look good so you looked good and National Lampoon, where you had to create everything out of nothing, and SNL, where you couldn't make any mistakes, and you learned what collaboration was.

The way financing for independent movies goes is great. You get the money from the guy who's actually doing the distribution in France. You say, "Do you want a piece of this movie?" And he's got to sell this movie to get his money back. That's the brains of it; that's the genius of this financing. "You want Germany? Give us a million dollars and you've got Germany."

Where do these stairs go?
They go up!

I realized the more fun I had, the more relaxed I was working, the better I worked.

And I don't like to work. I only like working when I'm working.

If you have someone you think is the one, take them and travel around the world. Buy a plane ticket for the two of you to travel all over the world, to places that are hard to reach and hard to get out of. And when you land at JFK and you're still in love with that person, get married.

And I say, 'Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know.' And he says, 'Oh, uh, there won't be any money. But when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness.' So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.

When I work, my first relationship with people is professional.

Religion is the worst enemy of mankind. No single war in the history of humanity has killed as many people as religion has.

I think that the online world has actually brought books back. People are reading because they're reading the damn screen. That's more reading than people used to do.

Something wild can happen to anybody and I caution anybody that walks out on the street, just settle your accounts before you leave the house every day.

My iPhone has 2 million times the storage of the 1969 Apollo 11 computer. They went to the moon. I throw birds at pig houses

The human condition means that we can zone out and forget what the hell we're doing.

The automatic things you do are basically those things that keep you from doing the better things you need to do.

Whatever you do, always give 100%. Unless you're donating blood.

Those are my people, you know? The ones who are going to crash and burn.

That's the reason I'm not the one that's dead because the attraction of the fast life is very powerful.

If you have a good script, that's what gets you involved. It's harder to write a good screenplay than to find something.

I would jump into the middle of the street and say, "excuse me, there's a Mercedes that's got to get through here." And I would push people out of the way, "get out of the way! Let him through!" Smacking their cars and stuff. Just like, "whack" and you just jump into it.

I don't really read the reviews - but I remember one I read a long time ago that said I had a face like a potato.

Morocco is the greatest. I should be getting money from the Moroccans because I'm just telling everyone that it's a wonderful place to go.

The secret is to have a sense of yourself, your real self, your unique self. And not just once in a while, or once a day, but all through the day, the week and life.

All of us kids ended up 'doing Mom.' There are four of us who've tried show business. Five if you insist on counting my sister the nun, who does liturgical dance.

You know ... they say an elephant never forgets.
What they don't tell you is, you never forget an elephant.

Parties are only bad when a fight breaks out, when men fight over women or vice versa. Someone takes a fall, an ambulance comes, and the police arrive. If you can avoid those things, pretty much all behaviour is acceptable.

I don't want to be that guy mumbling into his drink at a bar.

Sometimes I snore, like when I get really tired.

To people who want to be rich and famous, I'd say, "Get rich first and see if that doesn't cover it."

Grab this day by the neck and kiss it.

You have to hope that [good things] happen to you. [ ... ] That's the only thing we really, surely have, is hope. You hope that you can be alive, that things will happen to you that you'll actually witness, that you'll participate in. Rather than life just rolling over you, and you wake up and it's Thursday, and what happened to Monday? Whatever the best part of my life has been, has been as a result of that remembering.

People say I'm difficult and sometimes that's a badge of honour.

One of the things I like about acting is that, in a funny way, I come back to myself.

Friendship is so weird. You just pick a human you've met and you're like, 'Yep, I like this one,' and you just do stuff with them.

Yeah, I think that's sort of the American way. And it's also the Polish way, it turns out.

You can handle just about anything that comes at you out on the road with a believable grin, common sense and whiskey.

I'm just a potato that won't quit. I'm a potato with some legs. Some have eyes, I've got legs.

I knew that's where I was going. I knew we were going to Italy. You couldn't make this movie in America at this price. I knew it was going to be big. I knew there was going to be a ship involved and that there was going to be a set as big as the ship. I thought, well, here we go. But I knew that was where he was headed. He had been going this way for some time. All directors, once they have some success, they want to spend a whole heck of a lot of money. (Something else can't hear.)

Here's the thing, you just have to drive a lot faster, and if you don't get there, we're both fired.

If it starts to drag on set, or if you feel like it's not a fun experience, people get down, the energy gets down. You've got to keep the energy up.

When the phone started ringing too many times, I had to take it back to what I can handle. I take my chances on a job or a person as opposed to a situation. I don't like to have a situation placed over my head.

I don't know what my fans are going to think. It's definitely not what they're used to from me.

There are people who drove me crazy, but they got the job done. And when I see that person again, I nod my head. Respect.

We're born alone. We do need each other. It's lonely to really effectively live your life, and anyone you can get help from or give help to; that's part of your obligation.

Drinking again? Go to hell. All I ever do is make some movies that made a lot of money now leave me alone, I want to have some fun.

The money thing is, the sort of Elvis Presley thing of buying you mother car is great, that's very good. My mother has learned how to spend money.

You had to keep the mood up; you had to keep the tempo up. You had to keep the feeling of, "Hey, we're doing something that's really exciting. It's fun being with these people." And the more fun you have, the better you do it.

But I can only take so much TV, because there is so much advice. I find people will preach about virtually anything - your diet, how to live your life, how to improve your golf. The lot. I have always had a thing against the Mister Know-It-Alls.

If Google doesn't know the answer, then it's not a question

I'm a nut, but not just a nut.

The studios don't seem to foster good writing. They're not so interested in that, but they're more interested in what worked most recently. They're definitely very serious about making money, and that's not a wrong thing, but you don't have to make money the same way all the time.

I throw a Christmas party at my house. It's not really a Christmas party, because I don't want to call it a Christmas party. But let's just say I put a lot of Christmas trees around the house, so it smells good.

'Groundhog Day' was one of the greatest scripts ever written. It didn't even get nominated for an Academy Award.

The government can destroy wealth but it cannot create wealth, which is the product of labor and management working with creation.

I think romance basically starts with respect. And new romance always starts with respect. Like the song 'Love the One You're With'; there is something to that. It's not just make love to whomever you're with, it's just love whomever you're with.

I act like a jerk sometimes.

You can't think about what you're going to do. It just gets in the way. You have to be just available for life, otherwise you're not bringing anything to the party. So I don't lie awake thinking about what I'm going to do workwise. There's just too much going on.

I think we're all sort of imprisoned by - or at least bound to - the choices we make ... You want to say no at the right time and you want to say 'yes' more sparingly.

There aren't many downsides to being rich, other than paying taxes and having relatives asking for money. But being famous, that's a 24 hour job right there.

I don't know how this guy knew how much money I was making. I didn't know how much money I was making.

Different vodkas have different effects. Some make you feel a little ... poly-lingual. Some make you feel like you want to talk back to someone who's giving you a hard time. Some make you feel like lifting kettle bells.

Disneyland. The world's biggest people trap, built by a mouse.

You gotta want it.

My first movie, I got nominated for a Canadian Oscar-for Meatballs. For MEATBALLS. And who am I up against? George C. Scott. So he wins the award and I stand up and go, 'That's it-let's get the hell outta here.'

Chicks dig me because I rarely wear underwear, and when I do, it's usually something unusual.

Atheist leader Madalyn Murray O'Hair was murdered. Jon Murray and Robin Murray-O'Hair were also murdered by individuals involved with the atheist organization.

The only good thing about fame that I've gotten is I've gotten out of a couple of speeding tickets. I've gotten into a restaurant when I didn't have a suit and tie on. That's really about it.

This is not a dress rehearsal; this is your life.

I've killed myself so many times, I don't even exist anymore.

Movie acting suits me because I only need to be good for ninety seconds at a time.

I'm over the Oscar thing. I feel that if you really want an Oscar, you're in trouble. It's like wanting to be married - you'll take anybody. If you want the Oscar really badly, it becomes a naked desire and ambition. It becomes very unattractive. I've seen it.

Let's get one thing straight at the beginning. A lunar eclipse simply will not do. You may have seen a partial solar eclipse, but neither will that do. The sun is such a monster that until a few minutes before totality the light from the sun blasts right around the disk of the moon and the Earth is little changed.

Annie Dillard wrote that the difference between a partial eclipse and a total one is the difference between kissing a man and marrying him.

Just so. So people search out totality, no matter how remote the spot. And so we have come to Svalbard.

- from Out in the Cold

If I run into someone on the street, that's one thing. But answering mail for a living? I like a job where you can play and act kind of goofy and have some fun.