Women Born In The 1900s

"We all of us try to make God in our image. It is one of the worst of our temptations."

"The human desire to be understood is never quite sincere. It is on our own terms that we desire to be understood, not on the terms of truth."

"There was something disruptive about Christmas and not only in the merely material way. The original Christmas had proved exceedingly disrupting to the entire world and the tremors of the original event vibrated through every life year by year."

"Life is a reaching out for something or someone. That is its definition."

"For unbelief was easier than belief, much less demanding and subtly flattering because the agnostic felt himself to be intellectually superior to the believer. And then unbelief haunted by faith, as she knew by experience, produced a rather pleasant nostalgia, while belief haunted by doubt involved real suffering."

"There is no greater tyranny than that of social custom."

"If you think research is expensive, try disease."

"She was very attentive, and I think he was very moved by the experience of actually being in the same room with her. In fact, I think I saw a tear well up. It was a lovely moment."

"She as a wonderful mother. She was whimsical, smart, caring, loving, playful. If I had any fault with her as a mother, it’s that she never criticized her children. She was very, very caring and supportive. You might say to a fault. There were times when I thought I shouldn’t get away with that. We often think of film stars as these iconic figures who we see on the screen, but behind the scenes, there’s a family, there are relationships, and she managed life. She came from what I call pioneer stock. She was born in Canada, but really from a pioneer Mormon family. Then they left the Mormon family, but that pioneer’s strengths saw her through quite a bit. The more I think about her, and reflect on her and try to write about her, I realize what a resilient person she was, but she was resilient with kindness and warmth and humor, which is not to say her life was easy. I think it’s good for people to know about the difficulties she faced because I think we all face difficulties and work our way through and she’s a good role model in that sense."

"He introduced me as being the new Ann Darrow, and she looked up at me and she went, 'You're not Ann Darrow, I am!'" Watts says. "I thought, 'Oh great, she's 96 and her humor is still right there.' Then I had a moment of, "Oh God, what if she doesn't like me? What if she doesn't think I'm good enough?" -- and all that typical stuff. Anyway, we had a nice dinner and chitchatted, and at the end of the night, we dropped her home at her house, and she got out of the car. We all kissed and hugged, and she whispered in my ear "Ann Darrow is in good hands." Those were great parting words, because it felt like she was giving me permission and I was given the baton."

"King Kong was difficult only because of the hours we had to put in. At that time, there was no protection for actors about time or anything. We worked straight through for 22 hours once on Kong. It was really a wearying experience, because it was mechanics, really, as much as anything that we were dealing with. The technicality was transparency to transparency from the rear, and then re-photographing me in the foreground on the same level with that screen-so I couldn't really see what was happening at all! It had to be done many, many times to confirm that it was okay. So we worked for 22 hours!"

"When I listen to this rock and roll and look at you kids, I don't think it's a whole lot different than the Charleston and the Varsity Drag."

"I know when I was a kid, I used to look at these pictures and listen to the songs of the Gay Nineties, and I used to say to my mother, 'Oh, I wish I had lived then; it was so gay and so wonderful.' [...] Now [the Jazz Age] seems very mysterious and wonderful to you, kids, and when you have kids, they'll say, 'Gee, Dad, those 50's, they were something.' [...] I really think it goes in cycles. When your kids come in and say 'Gee, Dad, I wish we had done that,' and so on and so forth, it's the same thing. I don't think it's changed a great deal."

"I'm so happy to be a part of this ... era of wonderful nonsense."

"I have no kicks at all [The] fact is I'm pretty happy about the whole thing...I enjoy this country. I like the parks and the highways and the good schools and everything that this Government does."

"John always said he had three favorite women. Fanny Brice, Carole Lombard and me."

"Carole Lombard's tragic death means that something of gaiety and beauty have been taken from the world at a time they are needed most."

"Being poor didn't matter a bit. I didn't mind a bit. Wouldn't mind living in a ground-floor right now—you can get out the back door faster!"

"I love my work and I take it seriously. And I love everything I do and give everything I've got to whatever I'm doing. But I do not go about clutching my Career to an otherwise naked bosom. If my work were to be taken away from me tomorrow I wouldn't be stopped. I'd go on living, and still love it. There are a thousand things I could do, would do, would want to do. I'm like old Solomon. If he'd lost one of his wives he wouldn't exactly have been a widower. I couldn't be widowed by the loss of any one facet of my life. Because it's too rich, life is too abundant."

"I do walk off sets but not for the reasons you might suppose. I'm not temperamental about myself. I can take care of myself all right. But I do get temperamental when I hear some little would-be Napoleon of a director, some little killer-diller of a petty czar cursing out extras, grips, electricians. I've walked off sets when things like that happen. And will again, if and when they happen again. I've said to the pettifogging Nappies, ‘Why don't you bawl me out if that's the way you feel about it? You don't dare to bawl the stars out, do you? They could bark right back at you, couldn't they? So you have to light on the little fellows, the ones who can't talk back, don't you?’ It's an obsession with me."

"They’re not really so different. You know the old thing, comedy and tragedy are akin? Like lots of old things, it's the truth. Back of all comedy, there is tragedy; back of every good belly-laugh there is a familiarity with things not funny at all. There must be. You laugh with tears in your eyes, don’t you?"

"At first thought , we might say, 'our job is to win a war'...but I am sure it would be closer to the hearts of all of us to say, 'We are fighting a war to assure a peace...our kind of peace.'"

"Telling the truth is the basis of all classic art."

"What a period. What an age to have been alive in. Oh thank God I was born when I was."

"There is something very good in pride of race if you can be satisfied in your heart it is absolutely genuine and is based on things you have see, heard and felt rather than on those you have read."

"Courage is not herself enough. She cannot stand alone. She is a part, not a whole, a wife, not a man and wife. A well appreciated helpmeet."

"Few people can see God, and it seems an even bolder mind to see the Devil. Active evil is more incomprehensible than active good, and so it ought to be."

"There were times when I wished I had been 'prenticed to a different trade. I was putting in seven hours a day on it. It was an odd life I was always hoping that the end of one thriller would not overtake me before I had finished the other."

"The unity of instinct and the universal belief in freedom for the individual which id the backbone of democracy is a very real thing in Britain today. We are not only fighting for it, it is our greatest weapon."

"Our ideal is the statesman who knows and loves his country and who never makes the mistake of underestimating his employer, either in intelligence or strength."

"We, me and thee and the parson and all the other lads in the village constitute the public, and the politicians are our servants."

"As a nation, we English will fight and die for principles we cannot find time to teach in our free schools."

"To be free takes a lot of time and trouble."

"What attracted me the most of all to the detective story, was the protective covering offered to the author."

"'A quotation's only a short neat way of sayin' somethin' everybody knows, like "It's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide."' (Italics in original)"

"Once sex rears its ugly 'ead it's time to steer clear."

"Everyone can act. Everyone can improvise. Anyone who wishes to can play in the theater and learn to become 'stage-worthy.' We learn through experience and experiencing, and no one teaches anyone anything. This is as true for the infant moving from kicking and crawling to walking as it is for the scientist with his equations. If the environment permits it, anyone can learn whatever he chooses to learn; and if the individual permits it, the environment will teach him everything it has to teach. 'Talent' or 'lack of talent' have little to do with it."

"The theater workshop can become a place where teachers and students meet as fellow players, involved with one another, ready to connect, to communicate, to experience, to respond, and to experiment and discover."

"The most significant change in the games themselves is the addition of 'Follow the Follower' (p 62), a variation on the 'Mirror' game in which no one initiates and all reflect. This game quiets the mind and frees players to enter a time, space, a moment intertwined with one another in a non-physical, non-verbal, non-analytical, nonjudgmental way."

"Don't initiate! Follow the initiator! Follow the follower."

"That which is not yet known comes out of that which is not yet here."

"It cannot be emphasized too strongly that playing can pull many a director and cast out of a tight spot, freeing all of them from the fear-producing trap of memorizing, characterizing and interpreting. This playing draws upon a very important, almost forgotten, little understood or utilized, and greatly maligned life-giving force --- passion!"

"Play touches and stimulates vitality, awakening the whole person - mind, body, intelligence and creativity, spontaneity and intuition."

"Games develop personal techniques and skills necessary for the game itself, through playing. Skills are developed at the very moment a person is having all the fun and excitement playing a game has to offer--this is the exact time one is truly open to receive them."

"Through spontaneity we are re-formed into ourselves. It creates an explosion that for the moment frees us from handed-down frames of reference, memory choked with old facts and information and undigested theories and techniques of other people's findings. Spontaneity is the moment of personal freedom when we are faced with reality, and see it, explore it and act accordingly. In this reality the bits and pieces of ourselves function as an organic whole. It is the time of discovery, of experiencing, of creative expression."

"It's my nature to go around in high spirits most of the time and then to collapse."

"You'll never learn to act in Hollywood. Not in a thousand years."

"Most actors are basically neurotic people. Terribly, terribly unhappy. That's one of the reasons they become actors. Nobody well adjusted would ever want to expose himself or herself to a large group of strangers. Think of it. Insanity! Generally, by their very nature - that is if they're at all dedicated - actors do not make good parents. They are altogether egotistical and selfish. The better the actor - and I hate to say it, the bigger the star - why, the more that seems to be true. Honestly, I don't think I've ever known one - not one! - star who was successfully able to combine a career and family life"

"I'm a tough old broad from Brooklyn. Don't try to make me into something I'm not. If you want someone to tiptoe down the Barkley staircase in crinoline and politely ask where the cattle went, get another girl."

"With Barbara Stanwyck, here was a true pro, in her last year of screen stardom. We shot mostly on locations just to save money. One day, I saw her applying her own makeup beside the truck before the shoot. She looked up and just shrugged. Who could blame her? This production was cost-efficient."