Top 100 Philip Seymour Hoffman Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Don’t let people treat you like a cigarette, they only use you when they’re bored and step on you when they’re done. Be like drugs, let them die for you.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

2. “The film is made in the editing room...”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

3. “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

4. “Creating something is all about problem-solving.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

5. “Was I happy? Or was I just not aware?”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

6. “Success isn’t what makes you happy. It really isn’t. Success is doing what makes you happy and doing good work and hopefully having a fruitful life. If I’ve felt like I’ve done good work, that makes me happy. The success part of it is all gravy.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

7. “There are a lot of things going on with my life right now that don’t just have to do with career. So I have a hard time making decisions about work. That’s really a luxury problem.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

8. “I feel like I made a little bit of difference.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

9. “Life is short. Time is short. As we get older, time does quicken. It’s long, and it’s long pertaining to that thought, that the past is not done with you because you can’t rid of it.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

10. “Sometimes it’s hard to say no. Ultimately, if you stick to your guns, you have the career that you want. Don’t get me wrong. I love a good payday and I’ll do films for fun. But ultimately my main goal is to do good work. If it doesn’t pay well, so be it.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

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11. “Study, find all the good teachers and study with them, get involved in acting to act, not to be famous or for the money. Do plays. It’s not worth it if you are just in it for the money. You have to love it.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

12. “I would definitely say pleasure is not happiness. Because I think I kill pleasure. Like I take too much of it in, and therefore make it un-pleasurable, like too much coffee, and you’re miserable.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

13. “When you become a parent, you look at your parents differently. You look at being a child differently. It’s an awakening, a revelation that you have.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

14. “Films are always a fiction, not documentary. Even a documentary is a kind of fiction.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

15. “There’s something in the very small minutia of life that tells us something about the big, big picture that we see every day all over the place, and so I think the more specific and creative and revelatory you are in the micro, the more powerful the macro will be.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

16. “One person’s religion is another person’s cult.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

17. “When you read, you think, and when you smoke, you think. It’s a pleasurable thing, and not a duty.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

18. “I had insecurities and fears like everybody does, and I got over it. But I was interested in the parts of me that struggled with those things.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

19. “You can look at anything as a cult. Churches are cults in their own way.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

20. “I’ve worked with a lot of characters that are unhinged. I’ve played characters that are unhinged. That’s, like, my job.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

21. “Ultimately what I’ll do next is up in the air for me.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

22. “My mum’s name is Marilyn O’Connor. She’s here tonight and I would like if you see her for you to congratulate her because she brought up four kids alone and she deserves congratulations for that.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

23. “If you get a chance to act in a room that somebody else has paid rent for, then you’re given a free chance to practice your craft.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

24. “I have three children and I think I’m happy when I’m with them and they’re okay. When I see them enjoying each other in front of me, and then they let me enjoy them in turn. That brings a feeling which I would say is happiness.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

25. “I think good art, if I could be pretentious enough to say, I think good art deals with the micro to explain the macro.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

26. “There is no pleasure that I haven’t actually made myself sick on.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

27. “I think you should be serious about what you do because this is it. This is the only life you’ve got.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

28. “You know the circus performer who spins the plates in the air you know, and he’ll spin six or seven plates in the air? Acting sometimes is kind of that guy spinning all those plates in the air but in your head and in your body.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

29. “I know I wasn’t as handsome as some other guys, but I was OK with that.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

30. “I think I would have drank myself to death, literally, if I didn’t just stop, once and for all when I did. I am not ever going to preach to anyone about drugs or drinking. But, for me, when they were around, I had no self control.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

31. “I think Magnolia is one of the best films I’ve ever seen and I can say that straight and out and anybody that disagrees with me I’ll fight you to the death. I just think it is one of the greatest films I’ve ever been in and ever seen.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

32. “When you see the carrot at the end of the stick, what do you do to get it? These kinds of things that come up, that come up in the story of Capote writing “In Cold Blood,” and when you see the movie, you’ll see what I’m talking about.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

33. “I don’t want to repeat myself.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

34. “Actors are responsible to the people we play. I don’t label or judge. I just play them as honestly and expressively and creatively as I can.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

35. “I don’t know, I was young, I drank too much, you know, so I stopped. You know what I mean, it’s not really complicated. I had no interest in drinking in moderation. And I still don’t. Just because all that time’s passed doesn’t mean maybe it was just a phase. That’s you know, that’s who I am.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

36. “I think therapy is a helpful thing. I think everyone knows it. You do it for your life, you do it for yourself, because you want to explore some things, and get at the bottom of some things. It’s about your life, the quality of your life.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

37. “If I’m directing actors, I learn about acting that way. If I’m acting, I learn about directing that way. Producing is just something that’s come about because there’s projects I find interesting that I would like to help get done.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

38. “I have so much empathy for these young actors that are 19 and all of a sudden they’re beautiful and famous and rich. I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I’d be dead.’”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

39. “To be loved, I think, is the thing that gets you up in the morning.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

40. “My ideal weight is 205, actually.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

41. “I do feel like all the people I meet, all the people I’m in discussions with, if I’m working with somebody, I sense the same energy that everybody is suffering from the same predicament.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

42. “I have an awful memory, and I have a great memory. Meaning that, if I’m trying to remember something, I can’t remember it. But my recall is fantastic.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

43. “I didn’t go out looking for negative characters; I went out looking for people who have a struggle and a fight to tackle. That’s what interests me.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

44. “Sometimes I take a temperature of things just because everyone else does. Especially when I’m doing a play. I want to know what people are thinking, positive or negative.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

45. “The drama nerd comes out in me when I’m in a theater.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

46. “There are characters in movies who I call ‘film characters.’ They don’t exist in real life. They exist to play out a scenario. They can be in fantastic films, but they are not real characters; what happens to them is not lifelike.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

47. “I was probably finding my feet more than anybody. I really have to say I was more obsessed with myself faltering than anybody else.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

48. “My girlfriend’s a costume designer in the theater.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

49. “Well, I think everyone struggles with self-love.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman

50. “I’ve grown to really love musicals, you know?”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman