Quotes from Matt Damon

If anybody wanted to photograph my life, they'd get bored in a day.

Our kids are growing up with more privilege than we had; that's true for most of my friends in L.A. I don't know any actor who grew up with any particular privilege, so everyone wrestles with this. And I think, a lot of times, it's about being patient with your kids.

It's usually the exact same three things which are, the Scripts, the Director and the Role those are the three things I look for and really any two of them, If I get two of them that's usually enough, but definitely those are the things I look for.

Life is on the wire. The rest is just waiting.

I found myself getting more publicly shy when the gala events and big crowds started. Some people embrace it. To me, it's not worth enough to risk my private life being public.

It's better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody.

My wife is my soul mate. I can't imagine being without her.

If you are writing a story and trying to draw an audience to come and hear you tell it, it's got to in some way relate to them. Who wants to come and hear about your specific problems? It's not therapy - it's supposed to be a communal piece of entertainment.

The better the actor, the less you know about his life. I mean, nobody's better than De Niro and you don't know anything about him, right?

The first time I smoked was at home with my mother and stepfather; they were like, If you are going to do this, we'd rather you did this with us.

Now that I have kids, I'm probably more overprotective than I've ever been. My wife's nickname for me is 'red alert.' I sometimes check just to see if the kids are breathing. But I try not to be a helicopter parent.

That's the way this business works: if your movies do well at the box office, you will be offered more movies. It doesn't matter if you're a nice guy or you're a prick. If your movies do well, there's a job waiting for you in Hollywood. It's not any more complicated than that.

I honestly if I get a vacation I'm gonna go and sit on my couch in New York cause that's the one place I haven't been for a very long time.

Success is not something I've wrapped my brain around. If people go to those movies, then yes, that's true, big-time success. If not, it's much ado about nothing.

I'm becoming far more interested in just functionality and making sure my body is as strong as it can be so I can swing my kids around and not worry about aches and pains.

Being known as a writer did change the relationships I had with directors. The rap on actors is that they always want to inflate their parts. But when directors know you write screenplays and have a different view of things, you really get invited into the huddle in a much fuller way. And those collaborations end in friendships.

I think what makes a good actor's director is the same thing that makes a good director. Acting is just one of the trades necessary to make a movie.

My heart goes out to the people of the city of Boston. My thoughts and prayers are with the families who lost loved ones in such a senseless and heartless way.

I started 'The Rainmaker' in August 1996, and I've been working consistently ever since. It's not like I had some grand plan; I keep getting offered jobs so good I can't say no.

If anybody wanted to photograph my life, they'd get bored in a day. 'Heres Matt at home learning his lines. Here's Matt researching in aisle six of his local library'. A few hours of that and they'd go home.

Fame is really strange. One day you're not famous, and then the next day you are, and the odd thing is that you know intellectually that nothing in the world is different. What mattered to you yesterday are the same things that matter today, and the rules all still apply - yet everyone looks at you differently.

Still, the change is nearly indescribable - going from total obscurity to walking down a street in New York and having everybody turn and look; to feel the temperature of a room change when I walked in.

I'm always cautious about overstepping any boundaries. At the end of the day, it's a director's medium, and if they don't want to hear from me I just step back.

We're here for such a short time. When your great-great-grandkids study history, don't you want them to be proud that you were part of the solution?