Stephen Colbert Quotes

At first, I didn't realize it was gonna be a character. I just thought I was gonna be doing me.

I think a life of a human being is not something you can explain in a few interview questions. The stuff you do in the media is sometimes a great reflection and sometimes not a great reflection of who you are as a person.

Like an actor who transforms into the character that they're playing, you can transform into yourself.

Playing our parts. Yes, we all have to do that and from childhood on, I have found that my own character has been much harder to play worthily and far harder at times to comprehend than any of the roles I have portrayed.

I wake up and play a different person every day. Playing all these different characters and trying to figure out who your true authentic self is at the core of that as you're playing all these different roles, and man, that self-awareness starts to come into effect. And you start to see who you really are.

I choose roles that are not me.

Circumstances do not determine a man, they reveal him.

This is what I would say to my pupil: 'You have become only your fame and left behind most of who you were. How are you going to deal with that? Will you lose that person forever? Have you become someone else without really knowing it? Do you always have to stay in character for people to like you? Do you know that you are in character?'.

I play roles, but when I'm off stage, I always try to be myself.

People know me only from the Octagon, from the gym. I'm a different person outside and I am who I want to be.

You're always just going to be who you are.

We must at times search our own souls and discover what we really are. Our real character, much as we would wish, cannot be hidden.

I feel like I never get to play any version of myself or get to be a normal person.

Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them - the one, in fact, which is not a mask.

It’s always about, somehow, finding a part of myself that is relevant, and then turning the volume up on that particular part. So, I am all of the characters I've ever played, and I am none of them at the same time.

The great thing about acting is, because you're constantly playing other characters and exploring yourself because you have to find those other characters in yourself, you sort of broaden as a person over your life because you've been other people. So you can empathize with many different sorts of people. It's great in that way and I hope, therefore, as you get older as an actor, you not only get more interesting because you lived more, but you get a bit wiser as a person.

Dating is about finding out who you are and who others are. If you show up in a masquerade outfit, neither is going to happen.

I spent more time playing a person I was not than the person I am.

As life goes on it becomes tiring to keep up the character you invented for yourself, and so you relapse into individuality and become more like yourself everyday.

Situations reveal who we are, they don't create who we are.

When you don't show up as who you are, people fall in love with who you're not. Then when they find out who you are, that's when they leave.

You've got to show the world who you are before it tells you. Otherwise you become victim to someone you're not.

I tried to be someone else, but nothing seemed to change. I know now, this is who I really am inside. I've finally found myself, fighting for a chance. I know now, this is who I really am.

You are constantly invited to be what you are.

With every character, you alter, you can’t be attached to your own identity.