Quotes by Ellen DeGeneres

“A kid should be told that you can have feelings.”

“But seriously, I think overall in the scheme of things winning an Emmy is not important. Let’s get our priorities straight. I think we all know what’s really important in life – winning an Oscar.”

“Designing is my hobby. If I didn’t do what I do for a living – at some point when I don’t do this for a living – I’ll probably just do design work. I love finding really special pieces of furniture.”

“Faith is part of who I am, yes. I was raised Christian Scientist. The most important thing I saw every single week on the wall at Sunday school was the Golden Rule.”

“For some reason, we can’t just enjoy somebody else’s success. Somehow, that’s going to affect us. If they have more, then I have less – and I don’t know why.”

“Hosting the Oscars is pretty much the scariest thing you can do. To me, this is right up there with bungee jumping!”

“I am saddened by how people treat one another and how we are so shut off from one another and how we judge one another, when the truth is, we are all one connected thing. We are all from the same exact molecules.”

“I became vegan because I saw footage of what really goes on in the slaughterhouses and on the dairy farms.”

“I didn’t grow up in a house – we moved a lot, and we always lived in apartments. But we looked a lot; we went to open houses almost every weekend. I think that’s why I always wanted a house.”

“I do fantasize about having my own shop one day.”

“I do like men and I had, you know, a guy in high school that I wanted to marry desperately. He’s the mayor of some small town in Texas. I could be the mayor’s wife right now.”

“I get bored easily, so I need to do a lot. I’ve started a record label, so I get to nurture new talent and talk about music, which is a passion of mine. I’ve written another book. And I get to come to work and do the TV show, which is always really fun.”

“I grew up in a very conservative home.”

“I hate having to do small talk. I’d rather talk about deep subjects. I’d rather talk about meditation, or the world, or the trees or animals, than small, inane, you know, banter.”

“I have an amazing team; I have amazing producers; I have amazing writers, but at the end of it, it’s me making the decisions on the writing, the tone, the editing.”

“I just feel like every kid is growing up too fast and they’re seeing too much. Everything is about sex, and that’s fine for me. I’m not saying I don’t like it. But I don’t think it should be everywhere, where kids are exposed to everything sexual. Because they have to have some innocence; there’s just no innocence left.”

“I just want to find somebody special, somebody that I click with.”

“I learned compassion from being discriminated against. Everything bad that’s ever happened to me has taught me compassion.”

“I love clothes, so when I wear clothes, they’re usually somebody’s. You know, I’m not wearing Kmart.”

“I never buy a house thinking that I’m going to sell it.”

“I still have the shirt I wore my first time on Johnny Carson’s show. Only now I use it as a tablecloth at dinner parties. It was very blousy.”

“I think everybody should have the same anger towards the injustice that’s happening and the hatred that’s happening, and just fight it with love and compassion.”

“I used to beat myself up about weight and working out, and no matter what I did I never felt good about myself. I decided to accept myself and know that I am good.”

“I was coming home from kindergarten – well they told me it was kindergarten. I found out later I had been working in a factory for ten years. It’s good for a kid to know how to make gloves.”

“I was raised in an atmosphere of ‘everything’s fine.’ But as I got older, I was like, ‘Well no, everything’s not fine. There is stuff that’s sad.’ I am a really sensitive person. I think I am too sensitive sometimes.”

“I work really hard at trying to see the big picture and not getting stuck in ego. I believe we’re all put on this planet for a purpose, and we all have a different purpose… When you connect with that love and that compassion, that’s when everything unfolds.”

“I would love to have the same rights as everybody else. I would love, I don’t care if it’s called marriage. I don’t care if it’s called, you know, domestic partnership. I don’t care what it’s called.”

“I’m a comedian, and I definitely see the humor in a lot of things. I am also sad a lot. I cry often and easily. I think you’re supposed to feel all kinds of things.”

“I’m a lesbian, an Aquarian, and a vegetarian.”

“I’m not an activist; I don’t look for controversy. I’m not a political person, but I’m a person with compassion. I care passionately about equal rights. I care about human rights. I care about animal rights.”

“I’m probably the most honest person you’ll ever meet – to a fault, like, I-will-hurt-your-feelings honest. I’m sure if I lied about anything, it would have been silly, but I haven’t retained that information.”

“I’ve been trying to find women writers for my staff for a while now and I have three women on my staff and three guys so it’s pretty equal. I don’t know why that is. It’s been the same thing for a while. It’s hard for female comedians to stand out. That’s weird. That’s a shame.”

“I’ve moved about 10 times over the past 15 years. I don’t move for the sole purpose of getting rid of stuff. I’m not crazy. I also move so that I never have to wash any windows.”

“If we’re destroying our trees and destroying our environment and hurting animals and hurting one another and all that stuff, there’s got to be a very powerful energy to fight that. I think we need more love in the world. We need more kindness, more compassion, more joy, more laughter. I definitely want to contribute to that.”

“If you’re going to be honest with yourself, you have to admit that you go into show business wanting people to talk about you and wanting everyone to know who you are. But that also means there are going to be a whole bunch of people who don’t like you. No matter who you are.”

“It’s not like I grew up playing pranks on people, and I was not that girl in school.”

“Just go up to somebody on the street and say ‘You’re it!’ and then run away.”

“My dad is still Christian Scientist. My mom’s not, and I’m not. But I believe in God, and that there’s a higher power and an intelligence that’s bigger than us and that we can rely on. It’s not just us, thinking we are the ones in control of everything. That idea gives me support.”

“My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s ninety-seven now, and we don’t know where the hell she is.”

“Nothing says holidays, like a cheese log.”

“People are constantly asking Portia and me if we are going to have children. We thought about it. We love to be around children after they’ve been fed and bathed. But we ultimately decided that we don’t want children of our own. There is far too much glass in our house.”

“People love gossip. It’s the biggest thing that keeps the entertainment industry going.”

“Portia and I constantly say to each other, ‘We are so lucky.’ Sometimes it’s lying in bed at night before I go to sleep, and I just say thank you to whatever, whoever is out there.”

“So many people prefer to live in drama because it’s comfortable. It’s like someone staying in a bad marriage or relationship – it’s actually easier to stay because they know what to expect every day, versus leaving and not knowing what to expect.”

“The first house I bought was a little Spanish bungalow on Clinton Street in West Hollywood, right behind the Improv. I was renting it, and I asked the owners if I could buy it, and they were really nice and let me work out a deal. And I fixed it up and later sold it. That was when I realized that if you make some improvements, you can make money.”

“The only thing I really recommend, if you’re starting out in stand-up is to not try to copy anybody else. You can be influenced by people. I was influenced by Steve Martin and Bob Newhart and Woody Allen, but I never tried to be someone else. I always tried to be myself. And the reason people are successful is they’re unique.”

“The stand up, everything was accidental. I never grew up and was the class clown and had to get the attention. It was – it really is, I have a career despite myself.”

“The world is full of a lot of fear and a lot of negativity, and a lot of judgment. I just think people need to start shifting into joy and happiness. As corny as it sounds, we need to make a shift.”

“Trying to get the talk show, looking back on it, we had to beg a lot of station managers to pick up the show because people thought no one would watch it because I’m openly gay.”

“We focus so much on our differences, and that is creating, I think, a lot of chaos and negativity and bullying in the world. And I think if everybody focused on what we all have in common – which is – we all want to be happy.”

“We need more kindness, more compassion, more joy, more laughter. I definitely want to contribute to that.”

“When people show me clothing that seems very, very feminine, it’s hard for me to embrace that, because it just doesn’t feel like me.”

“While I was doing stand-up, I thought I knew for sure that success meant getting everyone to like me. So I became whoever I thought people wanted me to be. I’d say yes when I wanted to say no, and I even wore a few dresses.”

“You have to stay in shape. My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She’s 97 today and we don’t know where the hell she is.”