Top 136 Quotes & Sayings by Tilda Swinton

I was talking recently with a friend of mine who's determined to never meet her heroes, and I have another friend who's been horribly disillusioned a couple of times. But I've had a wonderful ride with meeting people who have been my North Stars, and Bowie's definitely one of them. He feels like my cousin; like the cousin I never had.

I've been on the other side of the table many times, trying to get people to be sympathetic to projects, and I've been the victim of that kind of intense kindness masking extreme stupidity.

I'm a Marvel fan, and I think this particular world that 'Doctor Strange' goes into is really, really, really exciting. I'm really interested as both an actor and a fan to see what's done in this particular world. It's all about creativity. It's not about everything exploding at the end. It's about something very different.

It may be unfair of me but I do feel I know it.

I'm a huge Marvel fan, and the fact that they take the liberties that they do in filmmaking - I think, if anything, that it dignifies the comics, and it says, 'Yeah. This is a strong enough, robust enough source. We can bend it; it's elastic. It's bouncy.'

My understanding is that it's quite difficult for actors in the theater to know anybody but actors in the theater. It's the whole concept of the amniotic fluid surrounding one industry, holding people in place. I've never had a season ticket. I'm always a tourist.

There is something insane about a lack of doubt. Doubt - to me, anyway - is what makes you human, and without doubt, even the righteous lose their grip, not only on reality but also on their humanity.

I knew Spike Jonze would do something really interesting with it.

Oh, man, you won't hear me talking about the drudgery of making movies. I don't buy any of that. All those guys who made 'The Revenant,' they loved it. They wanted to make a film, and they were the happiest people around to be doing so.

I always think of the word 'abandonment' when I think of the character.

I spent a lot of time thinking that I was some kind of foundling, that I had been a changeling, that I had been found under a bush somewhere, and that I couldn't possibly be kin - but the more I live, the more I feel absolutely like I come out of my family. I'm a sort of strange natural progression.

I was a professional gambler. When I lived in London, there were a couple of years when I didn't really earn money doing anything else. I mean, I did other things: like, I made work, and I was working with Derek Jarman at the time, but the way I made money was putting money on horses.

Nic's Charlie is something very particular. You can't really put them together. It's a phantasm.

Nobody is working for Marvel who isn't a super-fan. And it's run by the biggest super-fan of them all.

One of the wonderful things that I've always loved as an art student, what I always loved about comics, was that they are interpreted differently by different graphic artists all the time, so now film is doing that thanks to Marvel Studios.

I don't have a career, I have a life. I don't have an exterior judgment on what would be good or bad for me.

What he's done is recognise the cinematic nature of the book. It's beautifully realised - it's a beat film.

I wasn't around when Nic was playing Donald. I was around with Charlie.

I sometimes think I was always left-wing. I know that sounds completely crazy, but I do know that I asked questions when I was about four, and I remember noticing that I wasn't getting an answer, and I remember it annoying me.

I don't love the theatre. I'm just not one of them.

I don't really look like people in films; I look like people in paintings.

I find myself apologising for not being a proper actor. I never intended to be involved in the film industry and still do feel that, with the exception of a couple of brief skirmishes with the film industry.

Usually, with me, the project is always the second thing. The film-maker comes first. Films grow out of the relationship.

I remember noticing, when I had my babies, how much I liked them, and not just loved them, but I was really into them. I knew I was going to be curious about them and up for the mayhem ahead. But at the same time, I remember noticing I was relieved this thing was present in me. And I hadn't realised there might be a doubt.

Everybody thinks for one moment when they're pregnant that they're actually carrying the spawn of the devil.

The thing that keeps me being a performer is my interest in society's obsession with identity, because I'm not sure that I really believe identity exists.

The stories I most love are about the benefits of being blown off course.

We never know about anybody else's relationship and how they work - particularly the ones that work for a really, really long time. I was going to say only the people in it, but often, not even they understand how it works.

I'm very often referred to as 'Sir' in elevators and such. I think it has to do with being this tall and not wearing much lipstick. I think people just can't imagine I'd be a woman if I look like this.

I do like not knowing where I'm going, wandering in strange woods, whistling and following bread crumbs.

For a lot of actors, there's a sort of code of honor around playing something other than yourself, which I just don't have. I love feeling like I'm - I won't even say acting out, but performing in some deep seam of my consciousness or my family's consciousness or my past. That's really amusing to me.

This is the launch of the 'Doctor Strange' film interpretation of - in my view - a classic, which has been interpreted many times by other graphic artists, and this is just our graphic interpretation of The Ancient One. I would say the whole approach is about a kind of fluidity.

More and more, there are things in my life that I find hard to say. Like, 'David Bowie and Lorde were at my birthday party.' She's a phenomenal spirit.

I'm amazed now whenever I go back to London. I'm like, 'Wow. I used to kind of swing up these streets when I knew how this machine worked.' And then when you don't, you lose that. You need to get your license back. I do know how to plant a garden and keep chickens, but I don't know how to do much else.

Faith is in the eye of the beholder.

My whole relationship with Bowie started when I was 13, and I bought a copy of 'Aladdin Sane' when I didn't have a record player. I had this record for a year before I could play it, and it was the image - not the sound - that I was attracted to. I just saw this image and thought he was my cousin.

I live a soldier's life when I'm working. That's how it feels to me, except I've got a slightly greater chance of survival.

Do you want a list of what my dogs taught me? Patience, perspective, joy, loyalty, the simplicity and presence of their joy. That's a really great daily reminder, bad stuff happens, difficult stuff happens and you take them out onto the beach and you go "OK, now I see". You tell them the current political situation in the world and they go "should we go for a walk?" And you go, right, that's the correct answer.

As a performer, I'm constantly fascinated with the idea of being able to know what anybody else's experience is, and how misleading all informatives, like appearance, can be.

I never quite understand the way society decides who is beautiful and who is not. But an open face and a capacity for kindness always feel like reliable signifiers to me.

Anybody knows who lives with animals, they teach you more about what it is to be a good human than most people: patience, goodheartedness, enthusiasm, presence, forgiveness, focus, restfulness, honesty.

How do we identify ourselves, and how do we settle into other people's expectations for our identity?

In my house, a hot dog is a dog that's really hot.

Daily absorption in the physical actualities of nature is life as I need it to be: it means I am connected to such large things - sky, sea, hill, the vagaries of weather, the undeniable needs of animals - that I can disappear as a subject of interest, I can exist without self-consciousness. The city is a challenge for me, however thrilling a few days prove, for its insatiable overstimulation and the rarity of quiet. The city makes people bigger than they need to be.

I'm from the same planet as David Bowie.

If we don't accept loneliness, then capitalism wins hands down. Because capitalism is all about trying to convince people that you can distract yourself, that you can make it better. And it ain't true.

This self-obsession is a waste of living. It could be spent on surviving things, appreciating nature, nurturing kindness and friendship, and dancing.

It's a real comfort zone for me to feel alien.

You can sit next to somebody on the underground, and you can look at them quite intensely, but you can never, ever know what they're wearing under their clothes.

Sexuality is, of course, a great way of having a conversation between people.

Even beyond sexuality, I'm generally interested in identity.

I think that's true of all cinema, that's why cinema is the great humanistic art form. Whatever the film is, it doesn't matter what the film is about, or even whether it's a narrative or figurative film at all, it's an invitation to step into somebody else's shoes. Even if it's the filmmaker's shoes filming a landscape, you go into somebody else's shoes and you look out of their lens, you look out of their eyes and their imagination. That's what going to the pictures is all about.

I think there's a dishonorable tradition in Hollywood to give the idea, particularly to children, that evil characters are dark.

Art is good for my soul precisely because it reminds me that we have souls in the first place.

Most of us live our whole lives without having an adventure to call our own.

I would rather be handsome for an hour than pretty for a week.

I'm interested in that whole question of where we wear our identity and how can we see it.

I believe that all great art holds the power to dissolve things: time, distance, difference, injustice, alienation, despair. I believe that all great art holds the power to mend things: join, comfort, inspire hope in fellowship, reconcile us to our selves. Art is good for my soul precisely because it reminds me that we have souls in the first place.

I'm really interested in the idea of long, long life and transformation and immortality.

It's wonderful to actually have an opportunity to get real and show how complicated and fascinating sex is.