Quotes

I have not myself a very serene temperament.

All of my work is based on nature. I grew up in a rural environment and living in the Bay Area allows for immediate access to wonderful natural environs. Basically, nature is my genius loci, or the place where my spirit resides.

I am inspired by many mediums and use them to express varied aspects of my philosophies and life observations.

Personally, I believe it is important for mankind to respect nature - for homeostasis - and I have volunteered with environmental organizations, I do not attempt to have an environmental leaning regarding my artwork.

There is nothing enduring in life for a woman except what she builds in a man's heart.

I may play demons, but I've never played a wimp!

When I do a part, it's never hard work because I love it.

People always think of me as playing these terrible, terrible women, but I've really played very few of them - Medea, Gertrude, Lady Macbeth . . . yes, Mrs. Danvers in the movies . . . but no one remembers the pleasant people I've played - Mary, the mother of Jesus, and so many others. I haven't always been an ogre.

If you're born in the theater and wedded to it, the lights go down and your pulse goes up and your stomach won't stay still, and there's nothing like it.

I know it's fashionable now to say that Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca was a spiteful lesbian. Spiteful, undoubtedly. But whoever in the picture called her a lesbian? Tell me that?

[when asked if Medea was a wicked woman] Bad? Not at all. She was a woman used, abandoned, humiliated, scorned, but she wasn't bad. She loved, and gave everything she had, and was betrayed. She had great passion and she lived greatly. That, in my book, isn't being bad.

[in 1943] The devastating roles I seem to be blessed-or cursed with- simply do not affect my private life, even if they do exhaust me. You know, sometimes the more you hate the character you play the more convincingly you act it. Naturally I have never plotted to kill, although Hitler is a strong temptation.

[in 1924] There are so many strange, alluring, hateful, lovable, weird, tender, ugly women of history and of life. I want to delineate all of them, or as many of them as my life span will permit.