Top 140 Joseph Gordon-Levitt Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I’m tired of being tired of being tired of being.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

2. “The universe is not made up of atoms; it’s made up of tiny stories.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

3. “When I started editing on my home computer, I said to myself, ‘Well, I could be at home studying for a class or I could be at home editing a video.’”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

4. “The sun is such a lonely star. Whenever he comes out to see his friends, they all disappear.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

5. “This is the saddest, most depressing music I’ve ever heard. It makes me so happy.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

6. “I think there is something beautiful in reveling in sadness. The proof is how beautiful sad songs can be. So I don’t think being sad is to be avoided. It’s apathy and boredom you want to avoid. But feeling anything is good, I think. Maybe that’s sadistic of me.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

7. “If you don’t stick to your plan enough, and you’re too seduced by whimsical notions and new ideas, you can kind of lose your train of thought and end up with something that doesn’t have a solid through-line.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

8. “Everyone has a unique perspective and that’s valid. Everyone’s perspective is valid. That doesn’t mean that everyone has the same degree of skill level as an entertainer, but skill isn’t the only important thing. It’s also what kind of perspective and feelings you’re bringing to it.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

9. “That’s what life is: repetitive routines. It’s a matter of finding the balance between deviating from those patterns and knowing when to repeat them.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

10. “The most valiant thing you can do as an artist is inspire someone else to be creative.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

11. “The doctor’s wife ate two apples a day, just to be safe. But her husband kept coming home.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

12. “I just need some time away to remember why I stay.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

13. “I have an eclectic taste in stuff whether it be movies or music or books or food or anything. Variety is interesting.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

14. “Storytelling in general is a communal act. Throughout human history, people would gather around, whether by the fire or at a tavern, and tell stories. One person would chime in, then another, maybe someone would repeat a story they heard already but with a different spin. It’s a collective process.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

15. “You’re gone. No mailing address. But I send you letters anyway.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

16. “I lost you when you left me to find yourself.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

17. “I enjoy a challenge or provocation, something to think about, to talk about after it’s done.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

18. “One thing that stays pretty consistent for all my jobs is, I listen to a lot of music while I’m working.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

19. “I think there is something beautiful in reveling in sadness.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

20. “When you become a ghost feel free to haunt me.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

21. “Making checklists of things you’re looking for in a person is the numero uno thing you can do to guarantee you’ll be alone forever.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

22. “Supermarket tabloids and celebrity gossip shows are not just innocently shallow entertainment, but a fundamental part of a much larger movement that involves apathy, greed and hierarchy.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

23. “Here’s the new art of the twenty-first century: the art of curating, the art of plucking all the good stuff from a superabundance of crap.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

24. “Most of what Hollywood puts out is crap anyway.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

25. “I tend to think having an impact on the world is a lot more complicated than government.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

26. “Sometimes what someone else does is really not what you expected them to do, which to be honest, sometimes doesn’t work.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

27. “I just want to open up the avenues for people to express themselves. That’s what the media ought to be. It shouldn’t just be a conveyer belt of shiny products to buy. It should be a way that we’re all communicating and understanding each other.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

28. “Singing doesn’t have to mean that you sound like Stevie Wonder. I love to sing. I’m not the greatest singer in the world. But, a lot of my favorite singers aren’t the greatest singers in the world.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

29. “I don’t have any training in dance. I can convince an audience that I know how to dance because I’m a convincing actor.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

30. “The element of surprise wasn’t allowed near the Periodic Table.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

31. “But I would encourage anyone who has a crush on my character to watch it again and examine how selfish he is.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

32. “In the old days, people would gather around the fire, or they would gather at a tavern, and they’d tell a story. And then, maybe a week later, someone would tell the same story, but with a different twist on it. That’s how folk takes evolved.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

33. “Every day I’ve got to be thankful that I am alive, and you never know – the cliche is, I guess, you could get hit by a bus tomorrow, so you’d better be at peace with whatever you got going at the moment.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

34. “The chemistry and the comfort and trust between two people playing a love story l is key, and to have a friend that I could trust, and whose sensibilities I already understood, made it so much easier, and is a big part of why it all looks natural on screen.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

35. “The spiral in a snail’s shell is the same mathematically as the spiral in the Milky Way galaxy, and it’s also the same mathematically as the spirals in our DNA. It’s the same ratio that you’ll find in very basic music that transcends cultures all over the world.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

36. “Don’t we want to escape our real world and go into something larger than that, simpler than that, more beautiful or darker?”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

37. “Real life is not as simple as it is on a screen. I think real life is actually a lot more beautiful.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

38. “His hands were weak and shaking from carrying far too many books from the bookshop. It was the best feeling.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

39. “My dad never blew anything up, but he probably had friends who did. He and my mom have always preached that the pen is mightier than a Molotov cocktail.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

40. “I collect flickering stars in old pickling jars, poking holes in the lids so they can breathe.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

41. “That you can be whatever you want to be, whoever you want to be, regardless of your gender.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

42. “Movies are different from real life.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

43. “My mom brought me up to be a feminist. She would always point out to my brother and me that our culture does often portray women like objects.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

44. “If you’re going to put yourself above everybody else, you might end up alone.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

45. “Media used to be one way. Everyone else in the world just had to listen. Now the internet is allowing what used to be a monologue to become a dialogue. I think that’s healthy.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

46. “Why am I doing the work I’m doing? Why am I friends with this person? Am I living the best life I possibly can? Questions are often looked upon as questions of doubt but I don’t see it that way at all. I question things to stay present, to make sure I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

47. “It’s worth paying attention to the roles that are sort of dictated to us and that we don’t have to fit into those roles. We can be anybody we wanna be.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

48. “I know other worlds exist. I can see them in my peripheral vision.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

49. “The thing about Occupy is that the sentiment the movement embodies is timeless: Don’t be greedy, share.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

50. “When I arrived at Columbia, I gave up acting and became interested in all things French. French poetry, French history, French literature.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt