LOUISE BROOKS

When I went to Hollywood in 1927, the girls were wearing lumpy sweaters and skirts. I was wearing sleek suits and half naked beaded gowns and piles and piles of furs.

Every actor has a natural animosity toward every other actor, present or absent, living or dead.

I have a gift for enraging people, but if I ever bore you it will be with a knife.

The tragedy of film history is that it is fabricated, falsified, by the very people who make film history.

If I ever bore you, it'll be with a knife.

I do not excuse myself with the usual escape of 'not trying.' I tried with all my heart.

In my dreams I am not crippled. In my dreams, I dance.

I learned to act by watching Martha Graham dance, and I learned to dance by watching Charlie Chaplin act.

For two extraordinary years I have been working on it - learning to write - but mostly learning how to tell the truth. At first it is quite impossible. You make yourself better than anybody, then worse than anybody, and when you finally come to see you are "like" everybody - that is the bitterest blow of all to the ego. But in the end it is only the truth, no matter how ugly or shameful, that is right, that fits together, that makes real people, and strangely enough - beauty.

Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.

The great art of films does not consist of descriptive movement of face and body but in the movements of thought and soul transmitted in a kind of intense isolation.

Every actor has a natural animosity toward every other actor, present or absent, living or dead.

In my dreams I am not crippled. In my dreams, I dance.

I have a gift for enraging people, but if I ever bore you it will be with a knife.

Most beautiful dumb girls think they are smart and get away with it, because other people, on the whole, aren't much smarter.

There is no other occupation in the world that so closely resembled enslavement as the career of a film star.

I never gave away anything without wishing I had kept it; nor kept it without wishing I had given it away.

The tragedy of film history is that it is fabricated, falsified, by the very people who make film history.

If I ever bore you, it'll be with a knife.

For two extraordinary years I have been working on it - learning to write - but mostly learning how to tell the truth. At first it is quite impossible. You make yourself better than anybody, then worse than anybody, and when you finally come to see you are "like" everybody - that is the bitterest blow of all to the ego. But in the end it is only the truth, no matter how ugly or shameful, that is right, that fits together, that makes real people, and strangely enough - beauty.

I do not excuse myself with the usual escape of 'not trying.' I tried with all my heart.

Anyone who has achieved excellence in any form knows that it comes as a result of ceaseless concentration.

I learned to act by watching Martha Graham dance, and I learned to dance by watching Charlie Chaplin act.

A well dressed woman, even though her purse is painfully empty, can conquer the world.

When I went to Hollywood in 1927, the girls were wearing lumpy sweaters and skirts. I was wearing sleek suits and half naked beaded gowns and piles and piles of furs.

After a person dies, his biographers feel free to give him a glittering list of intimate friends. Anecdotes are so much tastier spiced with expensive names.

Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.

Love is a publicity stunt, and making love, after the first curious raptures, is only another petulant way to pass the time waiting for the studio to call.