45 quotes found
"There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public. There are worse things than these miniature betrayals, committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things than not being able to sleep for thinking about them. It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and worse"
"It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and worse."
"But now that I am in love with a place which doesn’t care how I look, or if I’m happy,happy is how I look."
"I stopped writing poetry when I stopped smoking.... It was more complicated than that."
"I write in praise of the solitary act: of not feeling a trespassing tongue forced into one's mouth, one's breath smothered, nipples crushed against the ribcage, and that metallic tingling in the chin set off by a certain odd nerve: unpleasure."
"Somehow we manage it: to like our friends, to tolerate not only their little ways but their huge neuroses, their monumental oddness: "Oh well," we smile, "it's one of his funny days.""
"My verse forms are relatively traditional (traditions alter). In general they have moved away from strict classical patterns in the direction of greater freedom — as is usual with most artists learning a trade. It takes courage, however, to leave all props behind, to cast oneself, like Matisse, upon pure space. I still await that confidence."
"Perhaps relationships work more powerfully when there is absence and tension and a lot of heartache. I can't live with people."
"Poetry is a search for ways of communication; it must be conducted with openness, flexibility, and a constant readiness to listen."
"All poets, all writers, are terrible parasites. We use people and experiences."
"It's a strenuous job every day of your life to live up to the way you look on the screen."
"I guess I became an actress because I didn't want to be myself."
"I am not an adult, that's my explanation of myself. Except when I am working on a set, I have all the inhibitions and shyness of the bashful, backward child . . . unless I have something very much in common with a person, I am lost. I am swallowed up in my own silence."
"The fact that I did not marry George Bernard Shaw is the only real disappointment I've had."
"[on Hollywood] I hated the place - not the work, but the lack of privacy, those terrible prying fan magazine writers and all the surrounding exploitation."
"If people don't like your work, all the still pictures in the world can't help you and nothing written about you, even oceans of it, will make you popular."
"(on doing interviews) Quite frankly, I'd rather have my throat slit."
"I bumped into every kind of disappointment, and was frustrated at every turn. Roles promised me were given to other players, pictures that offered me a chance were shelved, no one was particularly interested in me, and I had not developed a strength of personality to make anyone believe I had special talents. I wanted so desperately to succeed that I drove myself relentlessly, taking no time off for pleasures, or for friendships - yet aiming at the stars, I was still floundering."
"First I played ingénues and western heroines; then I played western heroines and ingénues. That diet of roles became as monotonous as a diet of spinach. The studio wouldn't trust me with any other kind of role, because I had no experience in any other kind. And I didn't see how I was ever going to acquire any other experience if I couldn't get any other kind of role. It was a vicious circle."
"It's hardly fair for women to do the same things at the same hours every day of their lives, while men have new experiences, meet new people every day. I felt that way as a little girl, with two older brothers around the house. It seemed to me that they led adventurous lives, compared with mine. I felt cheated and frustrated. I became a tomboy in self-defense. I decided that I was going to do things that were exciting, or at least interesting."
"[speaking in in the 1930s] I've never had a single close intimate girlfriend in all my life. I never had a chum to whom I could confide my secrets. I suppose that accounts for the fact that now it is so painfully difficult for me to open my heart and confide in people who are, so often, almost strangers. You have to learn so very young to open your heart."
"[on her early acting days] My very "naturalness" was my undoing. I had to learn that to appear natural on the screen requires a vast amount of training, that is the test of an actor's art. It would be more spectacular if I could say that out of the hurt and humiliation of that failure was born a determination to success, to prove I had the makings of an actress. But it wouldn't be true. That urge came later."
"[on her first marriage, which only lasted a day] Julian [Julian Anker] looked a lot like Abraham Lincoln, and that's probably why I fell in love with him. One day we were out driving and he suddenly said, "Hey, why don't we get married?" So we lied about our ages and got married in a sheriff's office. You should have heard our families' reactions - all sorts of screaming and shouting and carrying on about suicide. Well, neither Julian nor I had enough income to make it possible for us to live together, so our marriage lasted one day."
"[on making Only Angels Have Wings (1939)] I loved sinking my head into Cary Grant's chest."
"[1977 comment on Gary Cooper] I loved working with Gary Cooper. Gary was my favorite. He was so terrific-looking, and so easy to work with."
"[on director George Stevens] George Stevens started out as a cameraman with Laurel and Hardy, and he learned so many wonderful tricks, like having us walk forward while looking backward and then bumping into something. George was a darling man, so great with comedy. It's too bad he got serious."
"[In 1940] Those two and a half years on Broadway were the happiest years of my life. I loved the stage. I think every girl who wants to become an actress should put in some years on the stage."
"[About her first marriage] There was nothing tragic about it - it was a case of willfulness."
"I wanted to become a really accomplished actress, but I didn't know how to act, and had no chance to learn. In those days the studios didn't have coaches or drama schools and it was almost impossible to get on the sets to watch the older players. I finally decided there was only one thing to do: go back to New York and try to get into some plays there."
"[About her early career] I was all right in long shots, but when it came to close-ups, sustained emotion was beyond me. I knew nothing about acting and often wondered why I had not continued with my plan to become a teacher of modern languages."
"[While she was a model] Someone in the studio noticed me sitting in the background. They asked me whether I would pose for girls' hats, and with some diffidence I consented. My first posing was terribly self-conscious. The photographer liked my type, and employed me steadily that summer. I got $5 an hour and sometimes had five or six sittings in a day."
"I don’t think I have one - I like a lot, and we cook a lot with Asian spices like lemon grass and fish sauce."
"What is your favourite food?"
"I have a twin sister whose name is Anne, and as we live in the same city I’m constantly getting mistaken for her, and people are always asking ‘Are you Helen or Anne?’ And I’m so bored with the question, and I’m not listening, and I say ‘Anne’ without thinking. And then I realise and is it better to say, I’m sorry, I made a mistake! or to try to brazen it out, hoping no-one will realise?"
"I read a tremendous amount. But I also ride a mountain bike round the Wellington hills and on bike tours, and sail and tramp."
"I really like learning, and I liked learning when I was small. I guess I was one of those model pupils - except in one subject - see below."
"Can’t bring it down to one. Which part of childhood, anyway? When you were little and my mother used to read Beatrix Potter and the Winnie the Pooh books? Or when I was older and used to sneak read Enid Blyton (my mother didn’t approve of those!) No, better to say I read a vast amount, and on all sorts of subjects, and I loved historical fiction, and The Wind in the Willows, The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring (and the rest of the Trilogy), Drovers Road, the Narnia books, Kate Seredy books about Hungary before the First World War, Patricia Lynch books set in Ireland - all sorts."
"I started writing as a child, and then it got lost, and it was only when I began reading to my own children that I thought ‘I could do as well as this person’. Now one of the great rewards of writing is having characters constantly in your head, and seeing the world through their eyes and thinking about how they might respond to things that happen to them, and being aware of yourself in them."
"Writing is not about inspiration! In the main it’s about hard work and frustration and rewriting and rewriting. But there are moments. The best are when you’re writing and suddenly, words seem to flow from your fingertips and ideas happen that you haven’t had to work for and you don’t know where they came from."
"The worst is when you can’t think where to go in your writing, and an idea won’t get written."
"Write! (See the first sentence above - ‘best and worst thing about being a writer’)"
"I’m in love with that girl,” she said out loud in amazement, because she knew that this was a life-changing thing and life-changing things should be said aloud, should have a moment in time, and a place in the air, some molecular structure to make them real. I’m in love with that girl, she heard as it reverberated inside her head. And it was truth, she realised, as things are which you don’t think, but discover have always existed.”"
"Well, Louie, you’ll know then that Leviticus also tells us not to cut our beards, not to wear linen and wool together nor to eat crayfish or frogs or snails. I’m afraid that if we adhered to Leviticus the entire French nation would be an abomination in the eyes of the Lord"
"I am in love. It just happened, I never sought it, but I couldn't turn away from it"
"How lucky you are, to love and to be loved in return.”"