Laura Linney Quotes

The first rap that I wrote was about my Maths teacher, and as expected, he didn't like it, but the students loved it!

As a survivor, you learn how to talk fast, cut deals, lie when you have to - perfect training to be a politician, you know?

Happy people are ignoramuses and glory is nothing else but success, and to achieve it one only has to be cunning.

As a former high school teacher and a student in a class of 60 urchins at St. Brigid's grammar school, I know that education is all about discipline and motivation. Disadvantaged students need extra attention, a stable school environment, and enough teacher creativity to stimulate their imaginations. Those things are not expensive.

I learned a long time ago: You're in the entertainment business. You're not in the reality business. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other.

I know I have this kind of teaching element in me, but I don't want to become a 'teacher of theater' because that would formalize something that I'd much rather keep casual.

If beauty isn't genius it usually signals at least a high level of animal cunning.

In a weird way, I live vicariously through the characters I play as an actor.

To be an actress and act crazy is really fun for me, to be able to be acting like you'd never be able to act in your real life and scream and freak out. It's an interesting test for an actor.

I wanted to become a kindergarten teacher like my mother.

I think people involved in politics make good actors. Acting and politics both involve fooling people. People like being fooled by actors. When you get right down to it, they probably like being fooled by politicians even more. A skillful actor will make you think, but a skillful politician will make you never have to think.

People talk about the plots and what happened, and they see your tricks a mile away.

I am not sure, therefore, that the highest talent for dissimulation does not belong to a people that does not have that very great physical advantage: the Japanese. Their ability to gain our confidence and appropriate our technology and science is simply phenomenal.

Drama is easy to fool people with, but you can't trick people into laughing.

Acting is great therapy - you get to do things you'd normally get arrested for.

I can express the brooding part of myself on-screen. It's kind of fun to get to do the bratty things I really wouldn't do. And then I get to go back to my regular life.

I guess standup is really painting pictures with words - especially for me, as I describe quite fantastical, visual things. My art teacher, Dexter Dalwood, always seemed to think they were linked. We bonded over our love of Vic Reeves.

In third or fourth grade, I loved to sign stories and monologues.

A lot of my activity in the theatre, and even in writing poems, was a kind of retrospective aggro on the English teacher who wouldn't allow me to read poetry aloud.

I work my angles and things like that.

If you're shameless enough, you can sell anything.

I knew how to upset the people, and I did it in such a way that it was believable. That's how I made a living at it for 20 years. I don't regret a thing I done or said in wrestling. Nothing.

I always believe that when you're not courageous, you become cunning.

Everyone at school knew I wanted to be a singer. I'd always be banging on the piano playing my new song. The teacher would gather us round, and the whole class would listen.

Whatever I want to do or say, I get to do it on the silver screen, so in normal life I don't feel the necessity to do or say anything.