Top 40 Karan Johar Quotes

I love that first-time feeling that I can’t build in myself anymore, where I can learn and emulate other filmmakers. Be it Ayan Mukherjee, Punit Mahotra, Karan Malhotra, Tarun Mansukhani or Shakun Batra, all of them have taught me something or the other.

I have invariably been in love when I haven’t had the same reciprocated emotion at all. I don’t choose to talk about my personal life because I believe that I don’t want to, and I believe my personal life is personal.

I find that I don’t lie about the big things in life. The things that matter. And about me. While I’m talking about myself, I rarely lie: I know who I am, my level of talent, that I’m not the most versatile filmmaker, the person I am. I don’t lie about myself because I don’t lie to myself.

I simply can’t do one-word message replies: Yes. Ok. No. Sure. Cool. None of these are options for me. I must write something extra. Something personal. I put kisses and emoticons. Emoticons, by the way, are my very best friends. They have removed all the pressure of thinking up something personal to say.

No one wanted to be my friend because of my lunchbox – because I never shared my lunchbox. One day the principal walked in and said, ‘No one is friends with Karan Johar; who will be his friend?’ My CEO today put his hand up there and said, he will.

Everybody knows what my sexual orientation is. I don’t need to scream it out. I won’t, only because I live in a country where I could possibly be jailed for saying this.

My college friends call me Karu, which is the worst. Only in our country can we make a short form for a short name. But otherwise, I’ve never had a pet name all my life. But now, in official meetings, someone will call me KJo. And I’ll judge that person in my head. Just call me Karan.

When I’m making a film, I’m obsessive about what I do, and I get totally into it. That’s all I’m eating, breathing, living at that moment.

My very shy Punjabi father never taught me about the birds and bees. So shy was he that he may have thought he would get arrested for even talking about it.

For me, my country comes first. Nothing else matters but my country. I always felt that the best way to express your patriotism is to spread love, and that’s all I ever tried to do through my work and my cinema.

I don’t claim to have led a saintly life. There have been a lot of one-sided love stories in my life.

Infidelity has always existed, but I feel like it was brushed under the carpet, behind the scenes. Now everyone is at it – and they’ve stopped pretending they’re not.

I saw ‘Brokeback Mountain’ in a packed house in Chelsea, New York, when I was filming a Bollywood film there. Chelsea, being a predominately gay neighbourhood, had the most euphoric reaction. I saw couples holding hands and crying at the end. It was the most heartening viewing I have ever been to.

I’ve been the lull, and I’ve been the storm and also somewhere in between. But that’s OK. I love the limelight after all.

I firmly believe that emotions are universal, and I know that when they connect with the audience, it works. There is no such thing as an entertaining or a serious film; there are good films and bad films. Good films will always find a vast audience.

I grew up as the only child, and we did not have a large family. So for me and my mother, our friends tend to become our family.

I am not interested in producing fiction for Indian television at all, the reason being that I don’t understand the medium. I can be a judge or a host; I can do that as an individual. But to produce TV content, you have to know the game.

I feel Victoria may have a Secret, but you don’t have to know it!

I remember breaking the news to both my parents that I wanted to be a director, and they both looked very doubtful. They didn’t know what a closet Hindi film buff I was. I used to dance to old Hindi films songs on the sly, so my decision to be a part of Hindi cinema was shocking even for my parents.

I am a Gemini and can adapt to most atmospheres. You get two for the price of one when you are a Gemini.

The first time I fell in love, I was in my 20s, and I loved someone right till I was 31. And then I felt that emotion died within me. I wasn’t feeling alive at all.

Honesty is wonderful, but I suspect it’s also overrated.

I was one of the first early Twitter users from the film fraternity. And back then in 2009, I thought I was going to enter a world where people liked me, knew me, knew my work – it was going to be fine! All about the love, not the hate. And it was. At first.

I am a product of Indian cinema; I’ve grown up watching Indian films ever since I can remember. And song and dance is part of our lives; it’s part of our culture; we wake up to songs, we sleep to lullabies, you know, we celebrate every religious and traditional function with music.

Give me the flash lights, the red carpets, and all that goes with it. Please! Oh, and I love hoardings. I love them. Nothing makes me happier than my face splashed all over the city.

I, of course, was born as if I was a movie star in my head. Even though I had nothing, in my head I was always royalty. My mother always said, ‘I don’t know where you came from’. I didn’t have their value system. And I always lived beyond my means.

Sometimes new voices have the most spectacular vision. It is uncluttered and organic.

I am very strongly paternal. My paternal instincts need to be acted upon. My love needs a release. I love everyone. I don’t express my love enough, but the love within me needs a platform as a parent.

For me, a child means an old-age insurance policy. I have a nurturing quality in me.

I think that I have self esteem issues, really. If you really analyse it… People who really like me I have no interest in. The unattainable is always that I want to attain.

I’m not embarrassed about who I am. I’m not apologetic.

I’m not a walking fleet of vanity vans any more than I’m a walking, talking multi-star cast. I might want an entourage, but so far, it is entirely eluding me.

I feel what a spouse can do for you, no child or parent can. Just that if you get the right connect with your spouse, you get it going right.

Marriage is a definite no-no. I am totally married to my company. Emotionally, my mother fills up the void in my life. So there it is. My company is a spouse I will never cheat on, and my mother completes me as a son. I think I have a full family unit of my own.

I have always been interested in fashion and even contemplated being a fashion designer at one point of time.

Offence is no longer defence – it’s a full-time profession. Everyone is so offended all the time. The new police force that we weren’t told about: the moral police. No qualifications, no training, no understanding of actual morality, but they have a degree in the art of being offended.

I am not a hound; I am an attention-seeker. Very different animal. My kind of attention requires greater finesse.

Two powerful people can’t be friends.

There are ups and downs in so many relationships, but with Shah Rukh, there is deep love. There’s no other way of communicating the respect and love I have for him. And I believe that ours will be a dynamic, and relationship and connect that will be forever.

I do not understand why we are not raised to celebrate our bodies as children. Why we are told to be shy or awkward or self-conscious.