Top 150 Ethan Hawke Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Success isn’t measured by what you achieve, it’s measured by the obstacles you overcome.”

— Ethan Hawke

2. “Don’t fear suffering. The strongest steel is forged in the hottest fire. The facts are always friendly. Without a little agony, none of us would bother to learn a thing. The earth has to be tilled before the seeds can be planted.”

— Ethan Hawke

3. “If you don’t risk doing something foolish, you’ll never do anything special.”

— Ethan Hawke

4. “Expect nothing, and you will enjoy everything!”

— Ethan Hawke

5. “Read. It makes you more intelligent. It’s that simple. We all see the universe through the tiny keyhole of our own eyes, and every book is another keyhole from which you can gaze.”

— Ethan Hawke

6. “Happiness is in the doing not in getting what you want.”

— Ethan Hawke

7. “Everything is so finite but that’s what makes our time and specific moments so important.”

— Ethan Hawke

8. “Stand like you deserve to be here.”

— Ethan Hawke

9. “I did one sci-fi movie. I did ‘Gattaca.’ I liked ‘Gattaca’ because that was always the kind of science fiction I really dug, the non-action oriented sci-fi.”

— Ethan Hawke

10. “Arrogance is born of insecurity. Pride is different. It is born of dignity, self-worth, and self-respect. We all see the world through the prism of our identity. If our self-worth is low, it affects everything we do. The point of life is to contribute to others, but without a certain self-regard, it is sometimes difficult to make breakfast.”

— Ethan Hawke

11. “Humility. Never announce that you are a knight, simply behave as one. You are better than no one, and no one is better than you.”

— Ethan Hawke

12. “You don’t need other people to affirm that you’re a valuable person.”

— Ethan Hawke

13. “I’m magically delicious.”

— Ethan Hawke

14. “Oddly, with discipline, structure, and order, you will find freedom, anything is possible. Without it, locating your saddle may take all morning.”

— Ethan Hawke

15. “We all see the world through the prism of our identity.”

— Ethan Hawke

16. “There’s something about knowing life is finite that makes it so precious.”

— Ethan Hawke

17. “Everyone has to pay their child support, and no matter if you’re a Hollywood actor or anyone else, it’s always a little bit more than you want to pay.”

— Ethan Hawke

18. “There is no trick to writing a believable love story, a heartbreaking scene or real-sounding dialogue. All you need is to tell the truth. It’s always heartbreaking.”

— Ethan Hawke

19. “Pay attention: what you need to know is usually in front of you. There are no secrets, just things people choose not to notice.”

— Ethan Hawke

20. “If you don’t give inspiration an opportunity, it will never arrive.”

— Ethan Hawke

21. “In your mid-twenties, the paint is still wet on who you are.”

— Ethan Hawke

22. “I learned that evening that rain falls equally on all things. Jealousy, fear, and anger are obstacles to a knight’s first goal: a clear mind.”

— Ethan Hawke

23. “Give your heart to everybody you meet. The rest is pretense.”

— Ethan Hawke

24. “If you covet fame, if you covet all the superficial accolades, you’re gonna be miserable ’cause you’re never going to get enough praise. If you covet contributing something substantive to movies, music, literature, then you won’t be unhappy.”

— Ethan Hawke

25. “You can’t keep wanting to be 20 years old. Everybody knows that, but what’s in the next room?”

— Ethan Hawke

27. “I think that if you walk through this life and I end up being a bad father, then it won’t matter anything else I achieved in my life. It will all be irrelevant.”

— Ethan Hawke

28. “The peregrine falcon is the swiftest, most adept animal I have ever seen. It is worth noting that, like many bird, the falcon’s bones are hollow. Travel light.”

— Ethan Hawke

29. “Oh, I like going down the rabbit hole. You know, that’s kind of my job. When you play Macbeth, you gotta dive down that one. The trick is figuring out how to do it with love and a sense of humor so you can pop back out again. But, kind of the actor’s job is to go down the rabbit hole.”

— Ethan Hawke

30. “Depression is a real demon in the woods for a lot of creative people, you know? It’s part of what the documentary is trying to be about for me, finding balance, where the beauty that is attainable in the creative arts can be matched with the scratchy roughness of regular life.”

— Ethan Hawke

31. “We all have this fantasy of finding our one true love who’s going to be the perfect fit. It’s just not a reality.”

— Ethan Hawke

32. “I did this movie, Predestination, and it’s one of my favorite movies I’ve ever made, because sci-fi really lets you talk about ideas in a way that’s not pretentious.”

— Ethan Hawke

33. “Hello, you’ve reached the winter of our discontent.”

— Ethan Hawke

34. “We’re fascinated by things that scare us, and one of the things that scares us is violence. Violence exists. It’s a real part of our lives. We are obsessed with what we’re scared of, but it certainly doesn’t define us.”

— Ethan Hawke

35. “You are always in the right place at exactly the right time, and you always have been.”

— Ethan Hawke

36. “The older I get, the more I realize how rare it is to meet a kindred spirit.”

— Ethan Hawke

37. “I auditioned for Robert Redford once and I was so starstruck I couldn’t even speak. I had a mic wire at a screen test clipped to me and then I got kind of nervous and I paced in a circle and then took a step and tripped and fell on my face. You just have to forgive yourself and keep going on.”

— Ethan Hawke

38. “Directing is like putting together a collage.”

— Ethan Hawke

39. “The idea that a film is created in the editing room – it’s only a certain kind of movie that’s made in the editing room and it’s not one that I really want to see.”

— Ethan Hawke

40. “If you study the history of mankind, it seems to be a history of violence. Certainly the history of art, whether you look at paintings or movies or plays or whatever, is just a litany of murder and death.”

— Ethan Hawke

41. “When you do ‘Before Sunset,’ you know while it’s a limited audience, there was a very small group of people that love ‘Before Sunrise.’ You feel a certain pressure to make sure that you uphold a level of quality that has been a bar. You set a bar and you have to at least match it.”

— Ethan Hawke

42. “Love. Love is the end goal. It is the music of our lives. There is no obstacle that enought love cannot move.”

— Ethan Hawke

43. “The most creative and most periods of my life that were, had the most growth, were the ones where I was perceived to be failing. Perceived success is a, is really hard ’cause it doesn’t really, it’s not asking you to grow, see failure is asking you to grow.”

— Ethan Hawke

44. “The more kind of head trippy sci-fi. I always like that. I was a big ‘Twilight Zone’ freak.”

— Ethan Hawke

45. “When I woke up I was naked. I have this one oddball idiosyncrasy: Sometimes in my sleep I take off all my clothes.”

— Ethan Hawke

46. “It is quite rare to find people who are really dedicated to a level of excellence. Most of us are really quite lazy most of the time.”

— Ethan Hawke

47. “I’d be lying if I said I had confidence in every choice I’ve made, that I have faith in every film I do on every shot.”

— Ethan Hawke

48. “Habit, routine, and too much consistency numb our minds and pave the road for us to sleepwalk through our lives. Nothing stays the same. Everything passes, and everything changes. However, do not move too much. As an apple tree cannot bear fruit if it is too often transplanted, neither will a knight who is always building a new castle.”

— Ethan Hawke

49. “Possessions can be, and most often are, a distraction from the real work of a knight’s life. A lion doesn’t own anything at all, yet we all know his power.”

— Ethan Hawke

50. “I think it’s my job to risk looking foolish. One of the things I’ve learned from the actors I’ve worked with is you don’t get something for nothing. If you don’t risk looking foolish, you’ll never do anything special.”

— Ethan Hawke