When I’m surfing, I’m sure not thinking about the paparazzi. I guess if they start getting on floaties and coming out there in the water, then I might be a little upset.

At home I am a nice guy: but I don’t want the world to know. Humble people, I’ve found, don’t get very far.

If you’re a surfer, you just want to surf. You don’t know if anyone’s going to see you, and you don’t really care if they see you. You just live for that feeling.

Well, Howard Stern has been doing his impression of me for years. It doesn’t really bother me.

Joanne‘ is a progression for me. It was about going into the studio and forgetting that I was famous.

Fame itself… doesn’t really afford you anything more than a good seat in a restaurant.

Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.

Ultimately, who you choose to be in a relationship with and what you do in your bedroom is your business.

I like the city. I like the concrete. I like big business. I like being a CEO of my own company and having a lot of responsibilities. At the same time, when I can go off with a backpack or off on a surfboard or even off on a run somewhere in the woods – that’s where I’m really happy.

I need privacy. I would think that because what I do makes a lot of people happy that I might deserve a little bit of respect in return. Instead, the papers try to drag me off my pedestal.

A career is born in public – talent in privacy.

I never talk about my next project.

No one knows who is listening, say nothing you would not wish put in the newspapers.

The challenge for me as an actor is if you become a celebrity, you don’t meet strangers anymore. And strangers are where we have our anonymity. And I believe it’s essential for the soul to be anonymous, especially if you’re going to be an actor.

Once you’ve lost your privacy, you realize you’ve lost an extremely valuable thing.

The biggest guru-mantra is: never share your secrets with anybody. It will destroy you.

You can use your real identity, or you can use phone numbers for something like WhatsApp, and pseudonyms for something like Instagram. But in any of those you’re not just sharing and consuming content, you are also building relationships with people and building an understanding of people.

People think I’m a celebrity. I’m not a celebrity.

I wear wigs all the time on shows, and every day when I’m in public, at Dollywood. People say, ‚How many wigs do you have?‘ And I say, ‚Well, at least 365 because I wear at least one a day.‘

You have to be careful about how much you reveal to people that look up to you so much.

I think all documentaries leave out areas of people’s lives. Which is good. There are areas that need not be explored.

It’s not proper for the government to intrude too thoroughly into the domain of the family. It’s inappropriate.

I’ve been invited to do ‚Dancing With the Stars‘ three times, but Lifetime said no.

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.

If you look at my job, my union card, it says ‚actor.‘ It don’t say nothing about celebrity, movie star, nothing like that, and that’s one thing that keeps me humble.

If you were to ask me what I want to do – I don’t want to be a celebrity, I want to make a difference.

Should surveillance be usable for petty crimes like jaywalking or minor drug possession? Or is there a higher threshold for certain information? Those aren’t easy questions.

I use my celebrity status to inspire someone, to give them hope.

I like to hide behind the characters I play. Despite the public perception, I am a very private person who has a hard time with the fame thing.

You would think that a rock star being married to a supermodel would be one of the greatest things in the world. It is.

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.

I’m a golfer, and what are the two sports you can do till you drop? Golf and surfing. They’re great for you limber-wise, they’re great for you health-wise, and they put you in sweet locations.

I’m home a lot. Because I live in Ireland, we can live under the celebrity radar. I might go missing for a whole year.

I would never say I was an icon, but so many people have said I am, so I suppose I am. I mean, I can’t not be what everyone says I am. But I don’t feel like an icon.

I say, ‚Yeah, Taylor Swift.‘ I think she is a smart, beautiful girl. I think she’s making all the right moves. She’s got a good head on her shoulders. She’s surrounded with wonderful people. Her songs are great. She keeps herself anchored. She knows who she is, and she’s living and standing by that.

I’ve learned that usually, the less I know about other people, the better off I am.

In the United States, I am a great success, but I am not a celebrity.

I’ve never had that much trouble with the paparazzi, but I don’t run the same circles that a lot of these people that do get hounded by the paparazzi.

I think it’s very important to cry in the shower and not in front of them. They need to know that everything’s going to be all right, even when you’re not sure it is.

I’ve never seen myself as a star. I never call myself a celebrity or a superstar, whatever.

I don’t think you get successful to brag and throw what you have in the world’s face. That’s all private.

Our cellar home had a kitchen and a combination bedroom and half bath, which meant we had a sink next to the bed. We had no refrigerator, no shower or tub, and no privacy. My parents shared the bedroom with my sister and me.

What good is it being Marilyn Monroe? Why can’t I just be an ordinary woman?

I don’t let the left hand know what the right hand is doing.

I’m standing behind a wall of jokes. You don’t know about my personal life, my girlfriends, or what I do when I’m not on the road. There’s this guy, this comedian, and this is how he thinks, but people really don’t know anything about me.

If one synchronised swimmer drowns, do all the rest have to drown too?

I think Mick Jagger would be astounded and amazed if he realized that to many people he is not a sex symbol, but a mother image.

The real question for me is, do people have the tools that they need in order to make those decisions well? And I think that it’s actually really important that Facebook continually makes it easier and easier to make those decisions… If people feel like they don’t have control over how they’re sharing things, then we’re failing them.

As soon as I go out into the world, I belong, in a way, to everyone else. It’s legal to follow me. It’s legal to stalk me at the beach. And I can’t call the police or ask them to leave.

Madonna, I think, is the greatest visual musical artist that we’ve ever had. If you look at her photo log, the photographers that she was able to work with throughout her career framed her in the proper way. It was the proper context. It was that visual that made sure that everything was gonna cut through in a certain way.

Getting recognized is insane. It just blows my mind. Like, someone who you don’t know at all can just be like, ‚Oh my God – are you Billie?‘

He that displays too often his wife and his wallet is in danger of having both of them borrowed.

There’s always been a lot of information about your activities. Every phone number you dial, every credit-card charge you make. It’s long since passed that a typical person doesn’t leave footprints.

I don’t want to write an autobiography because I would become public property with no privacy left.

I say to the paparazzi, ‚Fellas, take your shot and go.‘ It’s just they usually find me on a beach.

I think the message has already been sent to Hollywood, which is that this kid’s a hard worker, he’s talented, and people are coming out to see him. And when you have box-office results, Hollywood treats you different. Hollywood stands up.

The only black battalion on Iwo Jima was a small munitions supply unit that came to the beach.

I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.

It’s dangerous when people are willing to give up their privacy.

Well, in order for me to be successful… In order to be a great artist – musician, actor, painter, whatever – you must be able to be private in public at all times.