Top 85 Quotes & Sayings by Portia de Rossi

When you have the paparazzi hiding in the bushes outside your home, the only thing you can control is how you respond publicly.

I was very sexual from a very young age.

I love to work. I really enjoy getting up really early and driving downtown. I just really love the process of acting and being on a series.

I want young people to see me and think you can be feminine and smart and successful, all at the same time.

I try to be feminine, yet intellectual and smart at the same time. You don't see enough of that.

I thought, I'm out in my life, that doesn't involve my public life.

It sounds so trite, but my private life is mine.

You live with the fear people might find out. Then you actually have the courage to tell people and they go, I don't think you are gay. It's enough to drive you crazy.

Even if I'm hormonal and I feel like I've got a couple pounds of water weight, I will never starve myself, I will never, ever go on a diet.

When I was 15, I changed my name legally. I think it was largely due to my struggle about being gay. Everything just didn't fit, and I was trying to find things I could identify myself with, and it started with my name.

I ran into Ellen at a photo shoot. She took my breath away. That had never happened to me in my life.

I'm living by example by continuing on with my career and having a full, rich life, and I am incidentally gay.

I want to exude strength and intelligence.

Eating disorders are shrouded in secrecy, and there are so many things I felt very ashamed of that I could never talk about. Even though I have fully recovered, there were still things that I needed to go through again and work through.

I have to be asked, I guess, but I love the idea of marriage. I think it's beautiful. I'm such a romantic, and I always have been.

I've had so many interviews where the last question is, Are you gay? I had to find very creative ways to say that I was gay, but that I wasn't going to talk about it.

I married him for a green card. We had a really great, caring relationship; it just obviously wasn't right for me.

In high school I had sex with girls quite a few times. They were straight women who I convinced to jump in the sack with me.

I didn't choose the fact that I was gay, but I did choose whether to live my life as a gay woman-that was the terrifying thing for me. Especially being a gay actress.

I did a lot of fast talking as a youth; I was pretty good at it. I was never talked into it - I was always the one doing the talking.

We must be able to inspire. That's my goal in acting.

My sexuality is a part of me that I really like. But it's not the totality of me.

If you've looked at all the glamour magazines lately, all the covers are actresses. If they are on those covers, they are going to try to emulate models. That's just the way it is.

I love being able to wear dresses and clothes that make me feel feminine and beautiful, and I love the fact that I don't have to all the time; I can wear a tank and jeans.

My feelings for Ellen overrode all of my fear about being out as a lesbian. I had to be with her, and I just figured I'd deal with the other stuff later.

I never, ever, restrict food, and I will never go on a diet ever again.

I saw Ellen and my knees were weak. It was amazing. And it was very hard for me to get her out of my mind after that. Then when I saw her that night, we started talking, and that's that.

I really never stopped thinking about Ellen, because I just haven't felt that kind of energy with anyone in my life.

I knew that I was gay, I knew it. I just couldn't see myself as a gay woman, even though that's where my heart was.

Just look at all the awards shows now. It has turned into a catwalk. You have to be wearing a certain designer, a certain dress, and everyone's critiquing.

People might find me attractive, but it's also my job to prove that I can be intelligent.

I have a very, very healthy relationship with food in that I eat whatever I want, whenever I want. I never restrict quantities or types of food.

The most important thing for me was to never, ever, ever deny it. But I didn't really have the courage to talk about it. I was thinking, The people who need to know I'm gay know.

The first time I was paparazzi'd, I thought I was being investigated for an insurance claim.

I justified it in so many ways. I had a very, very long and difficult struggle with my sexuality.

I stumbled into acting and just loved it. I deferred law school-and I'm still deferred.

When I watched Ellen come out in '97, my jaw was on the floor. I thought, There are some people who break the doors down, hold them open, and some people who walk right through.

Supermodels are over, and the new picture girl has become the television actress.

When I was anorexic it just seemed like I literally wanted to disappear. And now I would like to reappear.

I don't even like watching sex scenes in movies. I have a slight prudish side to me.

If I was 14 and knew some gay people, I wouldn't nearly have had the struggle I had. Our world is definitely changing.

Everyone is their own kind of lesbian. To think there's a certain way to dress or present yourself in the world is just one more stereotype we have to fit into.

I had a hell of a time convincing people I was gay - which was so annoying!

Oh, I don't have any fans. Personally? I don't have any.

Shame weighs a lot more than flesh and bone.

If your self-esteem really does depend on how you look you're always going to be insecure. There's no way you can get around it because you are going to age. Even if you get that perfect body you're going to get older and older and older. You can't avid it. So you have to somehow, at some point, take control and sift the focus and decide who you are, what you can contribute to the world, what you do and say, is so much more important than how you look.

I began to see myself as someone who can help others understand diversity rather than feeling like a social outcast. Ellen taught me to not care about other people's opinions. She taught me to be truthful. She taught me to be free. I began to live my life in love and complete acceptance. For the first time I had truly accepted myself.

Average. It was the worst, most disgusting word in the English language. Nothing meaningful or worthwhile ever came from that word.

Life can take so many twists and turns. You can’t ever count yourself out. Even if you’re really afraid at some point, you can’t think that there’s no room for you to grow and do something good with your life.

Restriction generates yearning. You want what you cannot have.

When it’s quiet in my head like this, that’s when the voice doesn’t need to tell me how pathetic I am. I know it in the deepest part of me. When it’s quiet like this, that’s when I truly hate myself.

Most important, in order to find real happiness, you must learn to love yourself for the totality of who you are and not just what you look like.

True nobility isn't about being better than anyone else; it's about being better than you used to be.

My decision not to eat animals anymore was paramount to my growth as a spiritual person. It made me aware of greed and made me more sensitive to cruelty. It made me feel like I was contributing to making the world better and that I was connected to everything around me. I felt like I was part of the whole by respecting every living thing rather than using it and destroying it by living unconsciously. Healing comes from love. And loving every living thing in turn helps you love yourself.

And I somehow always felt less lonely when I was completely alone.

Reality TV now doesn't feel reality TV when it started. The line between reality and fiction is blurred. So many of these people are phony or shallow, in their own right. If you've ever watched any of The Real Housewives, or those types of shows, they're all performing. Even though they're real people, they're performing.

And dieting, I discovered, was another form of disordered eating, just as anorexia and bulimia similarly disrupt the natural order of eating. "Ordered" eating is the practice of eating when you are hungry and ceasing to eat when your brain sends the signal that your stomach is full. ... All people who live their lives on a diet are suffering. If you can accept your natural body weight and not force it to beneath your body's natural, healthy weight, then you can live your life free of dieting, of restriction, of feeling guilty every time you eat a slice of your kid's birthday cake.

I could tell by his expression that once he got over his anger at me for keeping this secret from him, there was nothing left to talk about. He wasn't confused. He didn't need questions answered. He didn't ask why or how or with whom or whether I thought maybe it might just be a phase. He didn't ask who knew and who didn't know or whether I thought it might ruin my career. I was his sister and he didn't care whether I was straight or gay; it simply didn't matter to him.

There's a fine line between being private and being ashamed.

The diet industry is making a lot of money selling us fad diets, nonfat foods full of chemicals, gym memberships, and pills while we lose a piece of our self-esteem every time we fail another diet or neglect to use the gym membership we could barely afford.