Top 70 Portia de Rossi Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “True nobility isn’t about being better than anyone else; it’s about being better than you used to be.”

— Portia de Rossi

2. “Effortlessness is an attractive thing. And it takes a lot of effort to achieve it.”

— Portia de Rossi

3. “My sexuality is a part of me that I really like. But it’s not the totality of me.”

— Portia de Rossi

4. “Most important, in order to find real happiness, you must learn to love yourself for the totality of who you are and not just what you look like.”

— Portia de Rossi

5. “Every animal has its own intelligence and sensitivities. They’re all lovely, worthwhile, and deserving of our respect.”

— Portia de Rossi

6. “There’s a fine line between being private and being ashamed.”

— Portia de Rossi

7. “Life can take so many twists and turns. You can’t ever count yourself out. Even if you’re really afraid at some point, you can’t think that there’s no room for you to grow and do something good with your life.”

— Portia de Rossi

8. “When it’s quiet in my head like this, that’s when the voice doesn’t need to tell me how pathetic I am. I know it in the deepest part of me. When it’s quiet like this, that’s when I truly hate myself.”

— Portia de Rossi

9. “It sounds so trite, but my private life is mine.”

— Portia de Rossi

10. “When I watched Ellen come out in ’97, my jaw was on the floor. I thought, There are some people who break the doors down, hold them open, and some people who walk right through.”

— Portia de Rossi

11. “Restriction generates yearning. You want what you cannot have.”

— Portia de Rossi

12. “I’m living by example by continuing on with my career and having a full, rich life, and I am incidentally gay.”

— Portia de Rossi

13. “After all, it’s in the way an insult is received that makes it an insult. You can’t really give offense unless someone takes it.”

— Portia de Rossi

14. “Women in the postfeminist era, while supposedly strong and commanding and equal to men in every sense, looked weaker and smaller than ever before.”

— Portia de Rossi

15. “I never, ever, restrict food, and I will never go on a diet ever again.”

— Portia de Rossi

16. “I was very sexual from a very young age.”

— Portia de Rossi

17. “Average. It was the worst, most disgusting word in the English language. Nothing meaningful or worthwhile ever came from that word.”

— Portia de Rossi

18. “I would eat 300 calories a day – a lot of Jell-O and no-sugar everything, of course. I was doing Pilates, weight-training, circuit training; over lunch I would run on a treadmill in my dressing room with a fan on my face so I wouldn’t sweat my makeup off.”

— Portia de Rossi

19. “The diet industry is making a lot of money selling us fad diets, nonfat foods full of chemicals, gym memberships, and pills while we lose a piece of our self-esteem every time we fail another diet or neglect to use the gym membership we could barely afford.”

— Portia de Rossi

20. “I highly recommend inviting the worst-case scenario into your life.”

— Portia de Rossi

21. “I knew I wasn’t attractive, and I was very happy about that. I didn’t want to be attractive. I didn’t want to attract. As long as no one wanted to be let in, I didn’t have to shut anyone out.”

— Portia de Rossi

22. “You don’t have to be emaciated or vomiting to be suffering. All people who live their lives on a diet are suffering.”

— Portia de Rossi

23. “At my high school graduation, I graduated from home school, so it was pregnant teens and gang members. But, when I got on stage, there were kids in the background who all screamed, “Marry me!,” very loud.”

— Portia de Rossi

24. “Shame weighs a lot more than flesh and bone.”

— Portia de Rossi

25. “The theory of objectivism claims that there are certain things that most people in society can agree upon. A model is pretty. A lawyer is smart. Our society is based upon objectivism. It’s how we make rules and why we obey them.”

— Portia de Rossi

26. “I’m really attracted to strong women. Let me rephrase that, I’m really attracted to strong female characters.”

— Portia de Rossi

27. “I have a very, very healthy relationship with food in that I eat whatever I want, whenever I want. I never restrict quantities or types of food.”

— Portia de Rossi

28. “It’s always fun to play the innocent, no matter what you’re doing. If you feel like you’re doing the right thing, you can get away with a lot comedically. I had definitely missed not having a conscience.”

— Portia de Rossi

29. “My feelings for Ellen overrode all of my fear about being out as a lesbian. I had to be with her, and I just figured I’d deal with the other stuff later.”

— Portia de Rossi

30. “I didn’t understand that playing roles in any relationship is false and will inevitably lead to the relationship’s collapse. No one can be any one thing all the time.”

— Portia de Rossi

31. “I try to be feminine, yet intellectual and smart at the same time. You don’t see enough of that.”

— Portia de Rossi

32. “When you have the paparazzi hiding in the bushes outside your home, the only thing you can control is how you respond publicly.”

— Portia de Rossi

33. “I want young people to see me and think you can be feminine and smart and successful, all at the same time.”

— Portia de Rossi

34. “When I was anorexic it just seemed like I literally wanted to disappear. And now I would like to reappear.”

— Portia de Rossi

35. “I was trying to find a reason for having had to escape from the place that was my home. To convince myself of my choices, I had to make it a place that everyone should want to escape from.”

— Portia de Rossi

36. “Even when I took first prize, topped the class, won the race, I never really won anything. I was merely avoiding the embarrassment of losing.”

— Portia de Rossi

37. “I have to be asked, I guess, but I love the idea of marriage. I think it’s beautiful. I’m such a romantic, and I always have been.”

— Portia de Rossi

38. “And I somehow always felt less lonely when I was completely alone.”

— Portia de Rossi

39. “I love body parts, especially hands.”

— Portia de Rossi

40. “I married him for a green card. We had a really great, caring relationship; it just obviously wasn’t right for me.”

— Portia de Rossi

41. “I felt intimidated. I felt less than, not equal, and on a completely different, un-relatable level.”

— Portia de Rossi

42. “I thought that if I accomplished enough, that somehow I would be let off the hook in the future. Like I didn’t have to keep striving and achieving because I had done that already, and it would add up to being enough.”

— Portia de Rossi

43. “You treat me better than I’ve ever treated myself.”

— Portia de Rossi

44. “We must be able to inspire. That’s my goal in acting.”

— Portia de Rossi

45. “I felt the weight fall away from me. I lost the weight that I’d been carrying around since I was a teenager. Shame weighs a lot more than flesh and bone. Within.”

— Portia de Rossi

46. “This ring means that I choose to spend the rest of my life with you. I promise to love you in the nurturing and selfless way that you love me. I’ve changed so much since I’ve known you. Your love has given me the strength to be softer. You’ve taught me kindness and compassion. You make me better.”

— Portia de Rossi

47. “Healing comes from love. And loving every living thing in turn helps you love yourself.”

— Portia de Rossi

48. “I love being able to wear dresses and clothes that make me feel feminine and beautiful, and I love the fact that I don’t have to all the time; I can wear a tank and jeans.”

— Portia de Rossi

49. “I justified it in so many ways. I had a very, very long and difficult struggle with my sexuality.”

— Portia de Rossi

50. “Thanks so much, everybody, for making gay marriage legal, thank you for everything you’ve done-I’m just going to walk through that door.”

— Portia de Rossi