A biography for Tom Shadyachasn’t been written yet.
“I think true success is intrinsic... It's love. It's kindness. It's community.”
“Someone asked me the other day, 'What's the biggest influence on your filmmaking career?' And they started naming filmmakers. I went 'Naw, it's Jesus actually.'”
“As a culture, I think we need to redefine what it means to be happy.”
“Show business is part of a larger culture, a world-wide culture that must make up to the fact that the accumulation of things doesn't make a life necessary any happier or purposeful.”
“There is no 'I.' That's an illusion we've got to get beyond.”
“Christ is in all, meaning that the divine spark is in all things.”
“I was taught in school that I have to look out for number one. That was against everything that I intuitively felt.”
“If I end up homeless and penniless because of a shift in my behavior about sharing what's come to me, bring it on.”
“The second we define someone as a Democrat or Republican, it creates a whole set of limitations.”
“I hope people start to look at their lives as the most powerful, creative act they will ever offer this world.”
“My dad's half-Lebanese, my mom is full Lebanese. I'm three-quarters Lebanese. Irish-Lebanese.”
“We are what make up society.”
“I think laughter is a sacred act.”
“I'm from the Madeleine L'Engle school. The more she delves into science, the more she knows there's a creator who's behind these amazing laws, these amazing events. The symmetry of nature, the structure and order of it.”
“I've been called crazy many times before.”
“There's one fundamental law that all of nature obeys that mankind breaks every day. Now, this is a law that's evolved over billions of years, and the law is this: Nothing in nature takes more than it needs.”
“I don't see making films to entertain and making films to inform as separate things.”
“Definition is the death of discovery.”
“I love Frank Capra. He believed in the goodness of people and one man's ability to fight and often triumph.”