Kevin Smith Quotes

I sympathize far more with heavier people than I ever will with thin. I'll never be thin. Let's be honest.

More often than not, a hero’s most epic battle is the one you never see; it’s the battle that goes on within him or herself.

It's like a dream come true. When somebody is paying you to talk about yourself, you've won.

I know what it feels like to carry a lot of weight in a society that's very image-conscious. It's a thin person's world, and we try to navigate within it without being made fun of.

Is man, indeed, a walrus at heart?

Failure is success training.

If you're alive, kick into drive. Chase whimsies. See if you can turn dreams into a way to make a living, if not an entire way of life.

It's taken me 15 years to step behind a camera and make something everyone agrees looks like a movie.

I've always kind of ripped from real life to some degree or at least how I'm feeling in the moment.

All these people who say success changes people; well, no, it just magnifies what's there.

I just love movies, so suddenly, you’re political about movies, and that’s dark. It’s just not fun when something you love becomes calculated.

I liked hockey, and I still like hockey.

And George Carlin was a guy that the more he aged the younger he seemed.

I saw Richard Linklater's film 'Slacker' for my twenty-first birthday. That was the moment when it all seemed possible. This guy gave me hope.

AZRAEL: No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater... than central air.

There's something to be said for failing. It's not the failure you feel, it's the failure that people project when something disappoints. You're back to ground zero, where there's no expectations, and that's where I like to be.

When you're an artist, all you're trying to do is self-express.

My Father taught me how to be a man – and not by instilling in me a sense of machismo or an agenda of dominance. He taught me that a real man doesn’t take, he gives; he doesn’t use force, he uses logic; doesn’t play the role of trouble-maker, but rather, trouble-shooter; and most importantly, a real man is defined by what’s in his heart, not his pants.

Storytelling is my currency. It's my only worth. The only thing of value I have in this life is my ability to tell a story, whether in print, orating, writing it down or having people acting it out.

Indie film isn’t dead. It just grew up.

My Father taught me to weigh my words carefully, and speak up only when I had something insightful to add to the proceedings, or something really funny to say. He also taught me that if I couldn’t be that kind of guy in real life, that I could earn a healthy living pretending to be that guy in the movies – particularly when paired up with a long haired stoner.

My job is to say, 'This is how I see the world. Do you agree?'

In this life, if you don't celebrate yourself, nobody will.

We love dirty oral on the Down Low, but no going steady.

There's a trick to being whatever you want to be in life. It starts with the simple belief that you are what or who you say you are.

People always ask me if I hate the nuns. Do I make my movies extra dirty to piss them off? I always say no, that's not the point. To a Catholic, a movie is only dirty if it makes you want to have sex more. If it makes you feel sick, disgusted, ashamed of your own body, then it's not a dirty movie at all. It's a Catholic movie. And I make very Catholic movies.

Generally, I wake up, honestly it's creepy, but I wake up around 4:20.

I'd see movies, comedies, and I loved 'Animal House', I loved all the John Hughes stuff, but I never saw me and my friends totally represented.

In the face of such hopelessness as our eventual, unavoidable death, there is little sense in not at least trying to accomplish all of your wildest dreams in life.

Dudes know I'm not a threat. Chicks know I'm not a threat.

I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life should malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can't generate. Life becomes stagnant.

People like to set the bar high. I like to put the bar on the ground and barely step over it. I like to keep the expectations really low.

Don't let anybody tell you different, man: The main goal in life careerwise should always be to try to get paid to simply be yourself.

Any book is a self-help guide if you can take something from it.

In Hollywood you kind of fail upwards

It takes nothing to encourage an artist.

It's not like someday my kid's gonna be standing over my grave, and somebody's gonna hang her a folded flag and say, "You know what? This is 'cause he did 24 hours straight on Twitter." But it's just one of those little personal victories, like, "I wonder if I can do this." And I did it. A stupid goal, but I accomplished it. Life's all about...for me, at least...having very stupid achievable goals. That way, you always feel like a winner.

So often, over the course of our day-to-days, we forget the details of what shapes us most in life. Sure, we'll pay through the nose to have our weddings videotaped, but can we say the same thing about the first time we discovered masturbation, or the moment we realized that the true nature of the opposite sex is to lie and humiliate (and I'm not just talking about women here)? Usually not.

Live a "Why not?" life, man. Take the shot. The shot is always worth taking.

Long time no see. I only pray the caliber of your questions has improved.

I'm always cribbing from real life. I'm not a very creative filmmaker.