Jamie Foxx Quotes

We cannot turn our back and say that violence in films or anything that we do doesn't have a sort of influence. It does.

We can't wave a magic wand and get rid of any of these people's problems, but what they want is they want to be heard.

Quentin Tarantino is a hip-hop artist. I told him, 'You're hip-hop!' You keep seeing surprises, and a clip here and there, because Quentin is hip-hop. A hip-hop artist will drop a single, leak something over here, and drop something over there 'cause he knows it's hot. He's on the spot with the way he does things.

Black people are the most talented people in the world,

I try to be as honest and open as I am with everything that I do because it's just, um, It helps me, you know, like whether it's stand up or singing or act. I just try to stay true.

That's what's great about the arts. Everything inspires you, and you get a chance to grow from watching other people and how they do their work.

Also, I think having that comic gene kind of makes you look at things in a different way. If you take yourself so seriously, eventually you end up one of those people having a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on their lives. You see them drawing the curtains and they don't even realize that they've kind of drifted off somewhere.

In our music, in our everyday life, there are so many negative things. Why not have something positive and stamp it with blackness?

When you sing R&B songs in front of an audience, you look out and there's 85% women. I think R&B music is sort of designed for a man singing to a woman. I don't sing it like the sexy thing, but sort of pseudo-sexy. We rally the women together because it's about being independent and things like that.

If I were an animal, I would be an eagle.

Having a stage name is like having a Superman complex. I go into the telephone booth as Eric Bishop and come out as Jamie Foxx.

What we do in New Orleans, man - we party!

Lil Wayne is a music god!!!!

I am a comedian and you guys know whatever I say, I don't mean any of it.

When I was growing up in Terrell, Texas, I felt that it was not where I was supposed to be. I knew that I was meant for a different destination. I think that the minute I was born, there was something inside telling me where I would go, it's like energy - an intangible destiny.

It's so easy to play us guys that I hate to give away secrets to women because I know they'll use them. But OK, if you just simply don't give a guy the time of day, every once in awhile, it just makes us more like 'What do we do?' Men are developed to conquer. When we can't seem to conquer, we stay in it no matter what.

When you're an actor or actress in this business, usually the natural progression is to direct, but a lot of times, we don't get a chance to get to it. Myself, I really want to get into it. I want to be the person who eventually doesn't have to be in front of the camera.

(I get to) kill all the white people ... How great is that?

Man, after all my grandma put into me learning the piano, that was a hard day, telling her I was telling jokes for a living.

With 'Django Unchained,' when you're dealing with slavery, it's like a gymnastics routine with the highest amount of difficulty. Quentin Tarantino is not going to do a movie that's just going to lay there and be safe. There's going to be twists and flips.

In L.A. you can hide. I can hide at the beach, hide up in the hills. [In Miami] everybody is looking at you.

Then I was playing the piano at eight, and that helps you learn about women because most of the people I was playing for were women.

I never planned to win an Oscar. When I auditioned for 'Ray,' I was just thinking about what a great project it would be.

Nobody wants to hear R&B. It's sad. If you want to be on the radio you got to stay young.

My homies that are around me never give me that 'star pass.' I've hung out with some stars who are playing basketball and everyone let's them score all the baskets. Shooting pool, they let them make all the shots. My homies don't let me get away with that.

I've been a sports fan all my life, and like most other actors, I'm convinced I could have been a pro athlete if Hollywood hadn't come calling.

If I'm in the studio, I'm completely on music. I try to go to that place and that's the toughest thing for me to do. When I'm with other musicians, sometimes I go back to, almost like, childhood, because that's what I always wanted to be.

I've had to be a man since I was 12 or 13. I had a job. And I was playing the piano for people twice my age. Handling responsibility is what makes a man a man.

All of us feel special inside to where we feel as if we are the best, unique, or blessed. of course this is true, our error in this thought process is we forget that all the other people and all living things are just as special as we feel about ourselve.

You are what you repeatedly do when things get hard.

You have a responsibility to your work, to your choices. Once you get to a certain level of quality and commitment, you don't want to go back and make Booty Call 7.

I wish I could take what I'm feeling right now and put it in the water system so everybody could drink it and we would all love each other.

To be the leading man it's about the celebrity and the looks, and it's tough to do that. People who do it great are people like Tom Cruise and Will Smith - they're built for that. I ain't. I'm more of a character guy.

In looking at Hollywood and its structure, the director controls the medium, and I want to be in control of certain things. I want to be able to get my own ideas and my own feelings out there, and the only way to do that is to be behind the camera.

A lot of people may not know how competitive it is to play classical music, because when you think about it, the music that you're playing is music that's been here for years. And all you're trying to do is improve upon it when you play.

I'd like to say I'm R&B's savior.

Every two, three years there is a movie about the Holocaust because they want you to remember and they want you to be reminded of what it was. When was the last time you seen a movie about slavery?

But don't get caught out there looking goofy. It's weird. When you do something that stinks, it's going to last forever on the Internet. There's always someone in the audience with a camera phone and if you're not 100%, you're going to be watching yourself on YouTube.

So there is not a lot about me that you don't know other than that I play table tennis. I'm great, I'm great at table tennis! You will look at me and go, 'How does that dude know how to play that well?'

I didn't have a knee-jerk reaction like some people did to the language and the violence. My stepfather was a history teacher at Lincoln High School in Dallas. So, I was already familiar with the N-word and the brutality of slavery. What I was drawn to was the love story between Django and Broomhilda and how he defends and gets the girl in the end. I thought it was just an amazing and courageous project.

If you look at how long the Earth has been here, we're living in the blink of an eye. So, whatever it is you want to do, you go out and do it.

I'm bad on Valentine's Day, but even worse on Christmas. I go shopping at nine o'clock on December 24th every year. Nobody else is there. I'm in Toys'R'Us all by myself. I get there five minutes before closing.

I want to thank my daughter, who told me, 'If you don't win, Dad, you're still good,' ... who taught me how to act.

My Grandmother would say, 'Make sure you look good. Make sure you speak well. Make sure you remain that Southern gentleman that I've taught you to be.'

I'm a southern gentleman.

It's like church over here. It's like church in here. First of all, give an honor to God and our Lord and Savior Barack Obama,

Guys don't adapt as well as women do to getting their heart broken for the first time. It's tragic.

As a kid, I was scared of losing my mind. In Terrell, Texas, where I grew up, there was a guy that would walk down the street talking to himself. And I used to watch him and feel uneasy. And there was a sanitarium where people would say, 'That's where all the crazy people go.' It really sort of frightened me.

We can't retract the decisions we've made, we can only affect the decisions we're going to make from here.

I have about 20 to 25 platonic relationships with women all across the board from professional to artistic and they always give little clues on what they like.

Will.i.am and I performed at Wango Tango. That's when my daughter said that I had made it in music.

What's weird is when you meet a girl who is 23 and you are talking to her, even her voice is high-pitched, she's young. You ask her how old she is, she says, 'Twenty-three, how old are you?' and when I tell her I'm 41 it's like I've just told her I have cancer. It's, 'Oh my God, how long have you had that?'

Now ballads, I can mess around and get up on somebody on a ballad. People ain't seen it yet, but I can mess around and get up in there. I've had Ruben Studdard up in my house, Brian McKnight, Tank. Every once in a while I throw down with them.

The most interesting thing about acting is when you go to the dark places, that's a lot of energy. When you go to the happiest places, it's also a lot of energy.

I want to be the person who eventually doesn't have to be in front of the camera. I can be behind the camera and really change things cinematically, and this is giving me an opportunity to do something behind the camera, which I really want to maximize.

I would say my grandmother would be like my personal god.

I don't know if I'm built for marriage.