Top 55 Tyler Perry Quotes

If you look at everything I do – even in ‘Boo!’ there’s a message, and it’s always ‘faith, family, forgiveness.’ That’s the greatest gift that I’ve been given. I can get a message to the very people I grew up with, the millions who love what I do.

I was a very poor young black boy in New Orleans, just a face without a name, swimming in a sea of poverty trying to survive.

Macaroni and cheese was my mother’s special dish. She’d also make jambalaya and dirty rice and bake a ham that would be incredible. And greens. But if you were looking for vegetables and healthy things, there weren’t a lot of those.

Norman Lear is my all-time, ultimate hero. He’s an amazing man. That’s one person I’m looking forward to meeting. What he did, with shows and sitcoms, he’s my hero.

You can never be upset with the people who forced you into your dream or up higher.

What I know about me is that, in order to lead, you also have to know how to follow.

As a member of the Feeding America Entertainment Council, I recognize our mission to spread the word and rally the country in the fight to end hunger.

Children love their mothers. Especially with a boy child and his mother, there’s a bond that’s unbreakable.

There are a lot of people who have dreams, goals, and hopes, but there aren’t a lot who get to see them realized.

If you don’t want my God here, you don’t want me here either. God has been too good to me to go and try to sell out to get some money.

If you look at ‘The Have and the Have Nots,’ I didn’t want to write a show where everyone is great and wonderful and perfect. I wanted to write it so that you’re not really sure who the haves are. You look at Hanna, and you see that she doesn’t have much, but she has great faith.

I don’t do divas. I don’t do entourages. I don’t do the Hollywood crap.

I know my audience, and they’re not people that the studios know anything about.

I think that with everything I’ve done, in the end, whoever the central character is, they would find a way to forgive, because that’s really important to me.

For me, there is a guiding compass that just lives inside of me. Every time I’ve gone against it, something bad has happened. As long as I stay in line and honor it, it has really been life changing.

I don’t like popcorn, and I think it’s so annoying when people have popcorn in the theaters. That is the loudest food.

All my life I’ve tried to hide my height. I was taller than everybody else and stood out, so I would slouch and try to hide it.

Tyler Perry’s brand is faith, family and this whole thing that I’ve built, while my company, 34th Street Films, is like Disney’s Touchstone. We can do anything. People don’t know what to expect from me yet.

I had one request when I started doing the plays. My prayer was, ‘God, let me do well enough to be able to take care of my mother.’ I was able to do that ’til the day she died because of my audience.

I look at the stories that Spike Lee tells… Great stories. Great director, great storyteller.

It’s not an easy journey, to get to a place where you forgive people. But it is such a powerful place, because it frees you.

Being on the ‘Alex Cross’ set, and watching and learning about and paying attention to everything that was going on there, I realized, ‘Here is a moment for me to learn.’

The heart of who I am as a person and as a man is forgiveness, after forgiving my father for a lot of things that were done when I was child.

I’m trying to conquer swimming. I’m getting there. I’ve gotta conquer it. I had a fear of drowning and tunnels and flying. I started flying and got my pilot’s license, so I conquered that. Now, I’m onto swimming and tunnels.

What do you spend $200 million on, with a film? I can’t wrap my brain around that one.

You know, people at Wal-Mart are standing there with their uniforms on. I feel like I’m putting on a uniform to do a movie. I don’t feel like it’s dressing in drag.

I didn’t want to be the kind of man that my father was. So I’ve tried, my entire life, to be the complete and utter opposite of that. And it has served not only the art well, but I think the audience well.

Did you know you can’t say ‘Jesus’ in a sitcom? They told me that, and I was like, You gotta be kiddin’ me. If you don’t want my God here, you don’t want me here either.

I love to give. I’ve been a giver all my life.

You don’t try to do anything that Morgan Freeman does. He was the voice of God in a movie. That’s Morgan Freeman!

I think it’s important to show a husband and a wife together, in a room, raising children, because you don’t see that anymore.

Seven years after my mother’s passing, I still reach for the phone for a split second to call her. We spoke every day.

You close the door on me and tell me I can’t, I’m gonna find a way to get in.

Hollywood is finally waking up to the fact that people who go to church also go to the movies. I’m not sure what took them so long to see that or how long they’ll keep it up.

It’s a dream realized to partner with Oprah and bring scripted programming to OWN. She has accomplished so much with the network, and I’m excited to work with her to be a part of its continued growth.

I love to see a woman in high-heeled shoes. There’s something about the curve of the feet up the leg to the butt that’s really, really wonderful, and the right pair of shoes can give you the right silhouette.

He who has the gold makes the rules.

We are all allowed to support whoever we’d like to in this country. That’s the greatest part about being an American – one of them, that is; you know what I mean?

People see truth in my films. That’s what they react to, and that’s what they relate to.

There’s a huge demand for my entertainment, and I can’t meet the need. So I decided to try a TV show to reach as many of my fans as possible.

I work three months really hard, nonstop, and then I take a month off. Then I do it all over again. I work hard but I give myself four breaks a year.

I’ve been trying to learn to ski for years, but there’s something about being 6-foot-5 and falling that’s not appealing.

‘Madea’ is a Southern term. It’s short for ‘mother dear.’ So there are a lot of Madeas out there.

I definitely do not like Halloween. I don’t like masks, creepy clowns, dark things, goblins or witches. They’re not just my thing.

What I’ve been able to do with my character, Madea, and the other characters, with the jokes, is use it as an anesthetic to get to the heart and soul of real issues. And what I’ve found on stage over the years is that, while making people laugh, I can drop in pearls of wisdom.

Oprah is very, very, very special to me. She’s an amazing woman.

I feel like I died as a child.

After Obama became president, I realized that black people could not have put him in the White House – it had to be a collective effort of everybody in the country.

My first show was called ‘I Know I’ve Been Changed’ in ’92. I tried to do this show for years and years. It kept failing over and over and over again. Every time I went out to do the show, nobody showed up. I was like, ‘What is this about?’

Madea is a cross between my mother and my aunt. She’s the type of grandmother that was on every corner when I was growing up.

If you haven’t forgiven someone, it does not hurt that person. They’re sleeping at night. You’re holding onto that, and all the damage is being done to you internally.

I think every one of us, in life, have some sort of moment that has happened that we wish we could have done differently or that we wish could have had a different outcome.

Forgiveness is important in families, especially when there are so many secrets that need to be healed – for the most part, every family’s got them.

I don’t know about marriage as much as I do know that I’d be a great father.

The key to life when it gets tough is to keep moving. Just keep moving.