Top 150 Bill Murray Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “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.”

— Bill Murray

102. “I’d sort of gone through some sort of spiritual change in the late 70s where I sort of saw there was some other life to live. It changed the way that I worked just having a different presence and a different tension.”

— Bill Murray

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

— Bill Murray

104. “When you act obnoxious towards people, like on a movie set, they say “we’re ready for you” and I say “oh, go to hell, my feet hurt and my head aches.” You want to have a margarita for lunch, and people like these little ADs and production assistants are like, “well, he’s drinking again.””

— Bill Murray

105. “It’s fun to watch someone like John Goodman, and yet it takes work. People say ‘he’s not acting, he’s being himself.’ Well it’s hard to be yourself, it’s the hardest job there is.”

— Bill Murray

106. “People only talk about what a joyous experience it is, but there is terror: Your life, as you know it, is over. It’s over the day that child is born. It’s over, and something completely new starts.”

— Bill Murray

107. “While I have felt lonely many times in my life, the oddest feeling of all was after my mother, Lucille, died. My father had already died, but I always had some attachment to our big family while she was alive. It seems strange to say now that I felt so lonely, yet I did.”

— Bill Murray

108. “I don’t want to have a relationship with someone if I’m not going to work with them.”

— Bill Murray

109. “I count on the kindness of strangers.”

— Bill Murray

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

— Bill Murray

111. “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.”

— Bill Murray

112. “Yeah, I think that’s sort of the American way. And it’s also the Polish way, it turns out.”

— Bill Murray

113. “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.”

— Bill Murray

114. “You’ll never be good if you don’t know that you are.”

— Bill Murray

115. “I think all phases of one’s career are serious if you take it seriously no matter if you are doing high profile dramatic pieces or not.”

— Bill Murray

116. “I don’t know how this guy knew how much money I was making. I didn’t know how much money I was making.”

— Bill Murray

117. “Now, the essence, the very spirit of Christmas is that we first make believe a thing is so, and lo, it presently turns out to be so. – Stephen Leacockof Christmas trees around the house, so it smells good.”

— Bill Murray

118. “That’s the reason I’m not the one that’s dead because the attraction of the fast life is very powerful.”

— Bill Murray

119. “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.”

— Bill Murray

120. “I realize it’s impossible to have any sympathy, I mean, true sympathy, for people that are famous.”

— Bill Murray

121. “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.”

— Bill Murray

122. “I’m just an obnoxious guy who can make it appear charming, that’s what they pay me to do.”

— Bill Murray

123. “I feel like I’m a better person when I’m quieter.”

— Bill Murray

124. “I’ve never made any horrible, horrible movies. If you don’t ruin your reputation, you can always get work.”

— Bill Murray

125. “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.”

— Bill Murray

126. “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.”

— Bill Murray

127. “Chicago actors are hard-nosed. They’re tough on themselves and their fellow actors. They’re self-demanding.”

— Bill Murray

128. “Mrs. O’Hair died horribly, a victim of the world she helped to shape. Without the Deity she fought so hard against, there is no right and wrong, increasingly people are ruled by their passions and humanity is a tragedy waiting to happen.”

— Bill Murray

129. “I didn’t get into this position by being like a stiff sitting on the set in a folding chair. I did it by walking around on the streets and stirring things up.”

— Bill Murray

130. “You cannot pray them out of hell.”

— Bill Murray

131. “When I was a little kid playing baseball, my manager called me Sleepy. And only a few people, who know me from way, way back, call me that still. I used to drift off and that’s why they made me the catcher, so I wouldn’t fall asleep. That gift I have still.”

— Bill Murray

132. “It’s given many great performers their start, but more importantly, it’s killed thousands of barely talented people and it’s put them to death, and they’re now doing the jobs they’re built for.”

— Bill Murray

133. “Sometimes I snore, like when I get really tired.”

— Bill Murray

134. “People think because they employed you they’re allowed to treat you like a dictator, or whatever the worse word for dictator is. And that’s always been a problem for me. Opening the door for someone behind you is as important as designing a building.”

— Bill Murray

135. “I love the financing. It’s fun to do studio movies, too. I think you should do both. You don’t want to be this, “He’s an independent film guy.” It sounds like, “He makes his own dresses.””

— Bill Murray

136. “I know how to be sour. I know that taste.”

— Bill Murray

137. “You don’t have to have all this film stock, you can work faster, and you don’t need a giant crew. It’s great.”

— Bill Murray

138. “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.”

— Bill Murray

139. “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.”

— Bill Murray

140. “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.”

— Bill Murray

141. “I’ve been lucky, I’ve had movies that made a lot of money, so I don’t feel like I have to kill every time out. I don’t want that pressure. I don’t need it.”

— Bill Murray

142. “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.”

— Bill Murray

143. “Most people, when they talk fast, they get flat.”

— Bill Murray

144. “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.”

— Bill Murray

145. “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.”

— Bill Murray

146. “If people really want to find you, they find you.”

— Bill Murray

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

— Bill Murray

148. “There are a lot of actors that are more talented than me at Second City who quit it before they even got to a paying status. Weird luck. I had no other option.”

— Bill Murray

149. “I try to be available for life to happen to me.”

— Bill Murray

150. “When you see grown men near to tears because they’ve missed hitting a little white ball into a hole from three feet, it makes you laugh.”

— Bill Murray