Top 193 Quotes & Sayings by Shirley MacLaine - Page 3

I've always thought I was looking for myself whenever I traveled. Like a journey anywhere was really a journey through myself.

An actor has many lives and many people within him. I know there are lots of people inside me. No one ever said I'm dull.

You know, I have never had a casting couch proposition in my life. I thought there was something wrong with me.

Nothing should be permanent except struggle with the dark side within ourselves.

In some ways, America has grown up to be a masterpiece of self-concern.

You can't take a crash course in serenity.

God bless that potential that we all have for making anything possible if we think we deserve it. I deserve this.

He [Jimmy Carter] says his lust is in his heart. I hope it's a little lower.

If we can genuinely honor our mother and father we are not only at peace with ourselves but we can then give birth to our future.

I had a video made of my recent knee operation. The doctor said it was the best movie I ever starred in.

I do miss the stage. There's nothing like it, nothing. When I did my one-woman show and played the Palace and played the Gershwin and all that, I did - what? - eight shows or maybe more a week. Of course you can't do anything else, and you can't run quickly for a cab in the rain, and you can't have a drunken love affair. You can't do any of that. Because you've got to be perfectly healthy. And I guess I value enjoying my life a little bit more than the discipline these days.

bonding through dependence never works, whereas bonding through freedom always does.

I'm not sure I'll come back to this planet. I may come back to another one.

The pain of leaving those you grow to love is only the prelude to understanding yourself and others.

You can't lie when you dance. It's so direct. You do what is in you. It is impossible to dance out of the side of your mouth.

I'm a peaceful person once work ethic is established. If people are around me and whatever I'm doing is efficient, then I'm extremely peaceful.

I think materialism has trumped a lot of stuff, but I don't think it has trumped the heart, especially when it comes to (a person's) last thought.

I'm very aware, but I'm very naïve. When you are really naïve and expecting safety and expecting the best, you don't feel you're taking risks. You can get smacked a little, but usually it works out pretty well. I would say that, as much as you can instill your open-minded naivety, if you're basically open minded, then you can do damn near anything.

In order to get to the fruit of the tree, you have to go out on a limb.

To dance at all is to confront oneself. It is the art of honesty.

Some people think I look like a sweet potato, I consider myself a spud with a heart of gold.

I can't advise any of the young ones, because I don't know what their background was, but I would suggest that anyone who wants to be famous more than anything - there's a problem.

the illusion never really dissipates that you can lose twenty pounds in one night by cutting out dinner.

I realized that if what we call human nature can be changed, then absolutely anything is possible. From that moment my life changed.

Someday change will be accepted as life itself.

If I had a party to attend and didn't want to be there, I would play the part of someone who was having a lovely time.

The pickings are pretty slim when you have to play the part of a housewife who doesn't go out of her apartment because she's afraid she's going to get mugged, or a woman who turns into her brother, who is a murderer.

We humans should never forget our capacity to connect with the collective spirit of animals. Their energy is essential to our future growth.

It's not going to be about money. It's going to be about who am I, what have I done and where am I going.

On the stage you try to act real. On the screen you try to be real.

I have to do two things at once or I get tired.

Usually I'm right, by the way - so never mind all the other.

We cannot divorce what we are producing from what we are. We create technology out of the vision we have of ourselves. If we are blind in our conception of ourselves we will create a blind technology.

One can become as intellectually arrogant about spirituality as about empirical science.

On things she had to pack before leaving her home in advance of a forest fire, 1996. Childhood pictures and pictures of my life. Do you know how many pictures that is? Not just this life; I have pictures from 13,000 lives.

I think the world is in the mess it's in because we are spiritually ignorant.

I would say the biggest risk I always take is going in front of a live audience. There's nothing more risky to do. You have to really leave yourself open to your own authenticity, and you find that out pretty quick.

Melt their weapons, melt their hearts, melt their anger with love.

Hollywood always had a streak of the totalitarian in just about everything it did. The old moguls were essentially hard-fisted authoritarians who had created a system of linked dictatorships to control the creative people. We were supposed to be the children; mad, tempestuous, brilliant, talented, not terribly smart children.

I think it's much more important to know the truth than it is to make money on it.

He's a real gentleman. I bet he takes the dishes out of the sink before he pees in it.

Films and life are like clay, waiting for us to mold it. And when you trust your own insides and that becomes achievement, it's a kind of principle that seems to me is at work with everyone. God bless that principle. God bless that potential that we all have for making anything possible if we think we deserve it.

The secret is to let the audience feel through the actress, rather than having the actress feel for the audience. When you can do that, you involved the audience almost without their knowledge or awareness.

I'm very involved with learning to be self-sufficient.

When you look back... on your love affairs... what you really find out is that the only person you really go to bed with is yourself.

I believe in UFOs, I believe in extraterrestrials, and I believe in angels. And maybe they'll protect all of us.

Technology has outstripped our knowledge of self.

Being a dancer meant you nearly always thought about food.

For if the talent or individuality is there, it should be expressed. If it doesn't find its way out into the air, it can be turned inward and gnaw like the fox at the Spartan boy's belly.

It is incredible, when you start believing in angels your life becomes a lot smoother.

Fear is concealed in smiles and flashing teeth. 'Please say you still love me,' the kings and queens are really saying. And, when they fare badly, they return to their palaces and sleep fitfully.

I have a lot of friends who are around. I'm having a wonderful time in my life now with my platonic relationships with men and women, because when that sexual tension is off the requirement of the interplay, then you get to who the people really are, and to yourself.

Once you get your own family clear in your head, whatever your problems are with it. You're better prepared for being an adult in the world.

I'm a city girl and I never really lived in the country, so I'm learning about that.

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I simply channeled a character, this time I allowed the character to inhabit me.

Audrey was the kind of person who when she saw someone else suffering tried to take their pain on herself. She was a healer. She knew how to love. You didn't have to be in constant contact with her to feel you had a friend. We always picked up right where we left off.

... when things get rough, a breakthrough is just on the other side of the pain.

I'm too direct and too unsparingly impatient.

I'm an expert in hookers. I'm an expert in doormats. I'm an expert in victims. They were the best parts. And when I woke up--sociologically, politically, and creatively--I could no longer take those parts and look in the mirror.