Top 70 Michelle Rodriguez Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I’m stubborn. I’m hardheaded. I don’t do what I don’t want to do.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

2. “Everyday above ground is a Good Day.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

3. “You can keep knocking me down forever, I’ll keep getting up and trying.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

4. “When I am scared of something, I run towards it, instead of away from it.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

5. “The more confidence you have in yourself and the more you believe that you are destined to do what you are gonna do, it will happen.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

6. “It’s easy for me to work with other girls because I’m a tomboy and I don’t want the guy, your boyfriend – I’m not interested in looking better than you, so don’t worry. Fail or win, whatever it is, I need to go do stuff.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

7. “I just love feeling myself, and moving, flexing, jumping, expressing, dancing and doing movement. I’m in tune with it. I like to express myself with my body, more so than intellectually. But, I am a geek.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

8. “The Dewey decimal system really works. So that’s all I needed to know. Elementary school taught me that.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

9. “Until they come up with an independent woman who’s on an adventure of her own, I don’t think I’m interested.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

10. “We all have our moments. But you can switch it around. Then you’ve got the activist type who bases their decisions in the development of a character on what it symbolizes to society – what the ethical code is.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

11. “My favorite part of my body is my brain. I think no matter what my body looks like I wont be satisfied unless I know how to use it.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

12. “At school, I was this tomboy kid who just loved to hang out with her friends and learn curse words, trying to fit in with the cool kids and defending all the kids who got picked on.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

13. “I think empathy is a beautiful thing. I think that’s the power of film though. We have one of the most powerful, one of the greatest communicative tools known to man.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

14. “The way I survived growing up in Jersey City was by being funny. It wasn’t by being tough. Nobody thought of me as a tough kid, except for the kids I beat up.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

15. “People love destroying mankind, for some strange reason. You make a movie about mankind’s destruction, you’re going to fill seats. People just love the idea. For a couple thousand years, we’ve been dreaming up how we’re all going to disappear and fade away from this planet.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

16. “I’ve been part of really big things that are amazing, but I haven’t taken on that responsibility yet. So I don’t want to sell myself short by having a kid and then regret not doing what I set out to do.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

17. “I’m always researching ancient religions, and I was also raised Jehovah’s Witness, so that kind of scarred me for life.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

18. “Growing up in Jersey City was interesting. I got to learn a lot about different cultures: I had Hindu friends, Middle Eastern friends, black friends, Spanish friends.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

19. “People don’t like talking about it, but if you’re Spanish, you feel a weight.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

20. “I don’t have much history – I’ve got Rosie Perez, Jennifer Lopez, Rita Moreno. That’s it. That’s the history of Latin women in Hollywood, really.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

21. “I have absolutely nothing consistent in my life. But that’s where serendipity comes in and I love that. One day I’m going to have to sacrifice that to bring life into the world. But the more I can hold off on that, the happier I’ll be. It’s scary for me.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

22. “My dad was more, “Let’s play chess. Read a book, you’re stupid.” He’s more the intellectual type.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

23. “I’m like, “Well, damn, that means that I have to carry a flag.” I don’t have the freedom to just do anything, because I have the political weight of having this last name and my heritage. It’s not like I’ve transcended, Will Smith-style. It takes a lot to pull that off, to cross over, and transcend.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

24. “There’s a voice inside of me that I know people will relate to; I just haven’t really had the opportunity to let it flourish. To sit there and explain to a guy what it’s like to be a kick-ass woman is hard. I think there’re only a handful of directors out there that get it.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

25. “After Cannes every year, I end up going to some foreign country I’ve never been to before and introducing myself to a new religion – I’ll go to Bali and research Hinduism, or I’ll go to Thailand and get another tattoo from Thai tattoo artist Ajarn Noo Kanpai.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

26. “I think humans are stupid. We fight and kill each other. I think that’s dumb. Aliens would be smarter than that and wouldn’t approach things on that level. I can’t really fathom it being a negative thing for aliens to visit.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

27. “Sometimes I’d knock on the door of somebody I was going to school with, so it was like living a double life.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

28. “Basically I was a rebel growing up. I got kicked out of six schools. But I don’t think that it makes you less of an intellect. You know, if you ever crave knowledge, there’s always a library.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

29. “I hated school right away. Religion had a lot to do with it because I felt like everybody was always lying to me.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

30. “I use to watch like maybe three or four movies, five days out of the week. I was a movie buff, but I really didn’t know what it was like behind the scenes, or the whole political process of it.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

31. “I was born in Texas and I lived there ’till I was 8. Then I moved to the Dominican Republic with my mom, lived there for two years and forgot every word of English I knew.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

32. “Berlin is liberation. Architecture, man!”

— Michelle Rodriguez

33. “It’s the board I had a problem with. I could totally handle being in the water and stuff. I came here to do my own stunts. Water! Ocean! Action! Big waves! That water, that water has tamed me. You can feel that the world is connected to it.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

34. “I wanted to express myself. I wanted to be creative and I didn’t want to worry about someone bossing me around in the process. You have to struggle no matter where you are to get to where you’re going, so I’m like, working it honey!”

— Michelle Rodriguez

35. “Sometimes I wake up in awe that I’m alive. I can’t get over that part, so I guess it makes me kind of like an existentialist.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

36. “The roughest thing was learning the realities of the world at such a young age. I was 10 or 11, going to church, hearing the adults standing on the podium talking about world affairs, about history, about war, and how America was founded.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

37. “I enjoy vanity. But I can’t stick to any of that lifestyle for too long because, when its true colors come out, it’s empty and cold and soulless.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

38. “Guys are so predictable. They can’t seem to separate fantasy from reality, so I get a lot of bikers and race car drivers hitting on me. They’re all just playboys, so they don’t interest me.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

39. “I’d stare up at the sky and just dream a lot. Still do. I dreamed that I didn’t belong here, that I was going to travel a lot.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

40. “Going to car racing school was phenomenal.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

41. “I do what I want, when I want, how I want, and because of that, it has taken me so long to grow into an adult human being.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

42. “I wouldn’t want to sacrifice the last years that I have of being youthful in this business to have kids.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

43. “I just never felt like I belonged anywhere. I always had a stick with a little knapsack attached.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

44. “I would like to see a fierce Fantasia mixed with Blade Runner, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars all in one. That’s the kind of movies I want to make.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

45. “There’s something about strength that I really admire, that I failed to see a lot of when I was growing up.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

46. “When I was about 11, 12, we moved to Jersey City. Everywhere I go I’m an outsider.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

47. “The whole surf culture is starting to embrace women a lot more.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

48. “I learned that you can make a sci-fi film that is satisfying overseas. European people have everything in check. I’d make every sci-fi film in Europe. They only work 14 hours a day. After that, it’s overtime.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

49. “I do have a delicate side.”

— Michelle Rodriguez

50. “I don’t see the point of marriage. But when I need my love, I get my love.”

— Michelle Rodriguez