Quotes from Joseph Gordon-Levitt

If you're going to put yourself above everybody else, you might end up alone.

The only thing I want to do is stuff with people who care about what they're doing.

Ummm... well, the only thing I want to do is stuff with people who care about what they're doing, which sounds obvious, but it's really not.

While I'm not a celebrity, it's such a weird concept that society has cooked up for us. Astronauts and teachers are much more amazing than actors.

Astronauts and teachers are much more amazing than actors.

Real life is not like a movie. Even the best movies, the most rich, fleshed-out movies are not as rich and nuanced as detailed as real life or an actual human being.

I just need some time away to remember why I stay.

Once you spend time with [the afflicted], you start recognizing them as individuals, as opposed to lumping them in with everybody else who might have those symptoms.

Movies are different from real life.

So to compare your real life, or your partner or lover or whoever to a character in a movie, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. They don't map.

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.

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.

My personal belief is that everything is always happening all at once.

The thing about Occupy is that the sentiment the movement embodies is timeless: Don't be greedy, share.

To be honest, I sort of feel like 'movie actor' isn't of this time. I love it. But it's a 20th-century art form.

I don't buy into the glory days thing. I think every time has its great things to it. The '60s were such a glorious time but it's easy to forget that there was all sorts of bullshit too.

I think the dual existence thing is a regular pastime for all human beings, and for that matter anything in this universe.

On some level, we as human beings can be who we want to be.

A lot of people, most people who are working, they do it for money. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. It so happens that I made a lot of money already, so I don't have to worry that much about it. I wouldn't fault anybody for doing it for the money, but it doesn't interest me right now.

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.

If the goal is to get the best artists, actors, and filmmakers in the world to create the best movies, Hollywood does a decent job. And I think no one would disagree with me that it also makes a ton of bad movies and employs a bunch of hacks.

I think, honestly, that the word 'indie' is a false gimmick. 'Independent' used to mean a movie that was financed outside corporate Hollywood, but a lot of what gets called independent these days is totally produced within that system. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Celebrity doesn't have anything to do with art or craft. It's about being rich and thinking that you're better than everybody else.

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.