Damon: "It's better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody."

Damon: "Eventually stardom is going to go away from me. It goes away from everybody and all you have in the end is to be able to look back and like the choices you made."

Damon: "Paranoid is what people who are trying to take advantage call you in an effort to get you to drop your guard."

Damon: "I think what's important for kids to know is that your decisions here on earth matter, your behavior matters and how you treat other people matters."

Damon: "As a struggling actor, you're not looking for parts that define you; you're just looking for work."

Damon: "I grew up in and the teachers. I think I was very lucky. I think I had a lot of social capital, and so when I found myself in this position of influence, I just - then I started to engage a bit with some of the problems in the world and realize that I could actually have an impact."

Damon: "If I had a bucket list, I'd say raising my four girls to be strong, good women would be No. 1."

Damon: "Now I feel I have an unspoken deal with the paparazzi: 'I won't do anything publicly interesting if you agree not to follow me.'"

Damon: "It's just better to be yourself than to try to be some version of what you think the other person wants."

Damon: "Being known as a writer did change the relationships I had with directors. The rap on actors is that they always want to inflate their parts. But when directors know you write screenplays and have a different view of things, you really get invited into the huddle in a much fuller way. And those collaborations end in friendships."

Damon: "If anybody wanted to photograph my life, they'd get bored in a day."

Damon: "For a lot of actors, our biggest fear is that we're going to start talking about things we don't fully understand and sound like idiots."

Damon: "Some people just see the glory and they don't want to know about the story."

Damon: "Please find out what you can do to make a difference. Take five minutes to educate yourself on an issue you didn't know about before. Then tell somebody else."

Damon: "I believe a solid, really strong middle-class is the key to making the country in the best way."

Damon: "We're here for such a short time. When your great-great-grandkids study history, don't you want them to be proud that you were part of the solution?"

Damon: "If you work at something, you get better at it."

Damon: "Bond is part of the system. He's an imperialist and a misogynist, and he laughs at killing people, and he sits there slugging martinis. It'll never be the same thing as this, because Bourne is a guy who is against the establishment, who is paranoid and on the run. I just think fundamentally they're just very different things."

Damon: "If there's an idea I think is really good and I feel like I can write it, then I'll do it."