Jacob Epstein Quotes

During my childhood, I had a long, dangerous spell of illness, and my health has always been delicate.

I've had so many injuries in my life that it's ridiculous.

I had terrible ear problems and asthma and allergies. I spent quite a bit of time in hospital up to the age of eight so was not - am still not - extraordinarily intelligent.

My father fell really chronically ill when I was 13 and that's when I phoned up an agent and started to act.

When I was 11, I spent eight months in the hospital with rheumatic fever and almost died.

I was born three weeks early, and I kept being ill. From the age of zero to four, I was always in hospital having tests done, but they couldn't find out what was wrong. They discovered that one of my kidneys wasn't working properly, and it had scarred. I had to have 32 injections in my arm in the morning and evening to try and make me better.

Illness can make us behave in the most surprising ways.

The first five to six years of my life were spent in and out of the hospital.

My dad had a series of heart attacks when I was a little girl, and our world was shaped by these huge, traumatic events.

I feel great. I had a blood clot. It was a bad deal. But when I look at my friends with hip replacements, knee replacements, shoulder replacements, neck surgeries, back surgeries, I'll take the blood clot.

I had quite a healthy childhood in the countryside, but I did have double pneumonia aged eight, and was one of the first patients to be given antibiotics.

If the people in the emergency room didn't know my name, they definitely knew my face because I was in there, like, every other week. I was one of those kids.

I had whooping cough when I was very young, which left me with bronchial problems, and I would always pick up colds. I was very thin and nervous so my father and mother took me out of school and had me tutored at home.

I grew up in hospitals. My father was sick. So I grew up in hospitals from the age of 10. Got to see a lot of suffering.

I suffered a stroke in 2002 that made everything else in my life that happened to that point pale in comparison.

When I was in my 20s, I was always sick. I was always feeling exhausted.

What happens when you have an illness where you're never going to be healthy? Does that mean I'm never going to have a life? Am I never going to do anything or be anything other than a sick kid?

The life of any chronically ill person becomes extremely isolating.

Reality is I'm sick all the time.

After 9/11, you kind of didn't want to open up your heart to more pain.

Over the years, I've hurt my thumb, separated my shoulder, and injured my back, but not too bad. Actually, my back was hurt pretty bad. I had to take an ambulance and was in bed for a week.

I'm that person at school who always had a cold and an eye patch and asthma.

I was bullied in high school, and it's interesting coming from the other side of the camera lens, finding out that all of these people that I thought were my antagonists in my life were probably just as insecure as I was at that age.

I had a couple of severe injuries, and it's not easy to watch your team from a bed in a hospital!

Not everything made you stronger. It was possible to survive, yet still be crippled for your trouble. Sometimes it was okay to run away, to skip the test, to chicken out. Or at least to get some help.