Margo Jefferson Quotes

When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people.

In my love-challenged condition, seeing a difficulty for someone else can leave me feeling a little more smug or superior-by-comparison.

Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

In the worst memoirs, you can feel the author justifying himself - forgiving himself - in every paragraph. In the best memoirs, the author is tougher on him- or herself than his or her readers will ever be.

I don't think anyone really is interested in reading about my emotional state. It's not even interesting to me.

The only person you resent is yourself.

Sometimes, I have played something that psychologically sticks with me, that's opposite of where I am. I guess I have a lot of anger in me.

Writing your memoir is inherently narcissistic.

There's no anger in my act towards anyone other than myself... and maybe airlines.

The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.

There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself.

I have a special grudge against those who have the same faults as I do.

It is a hard and nice subject for a man to speak of himself: it grates his own heart to say anything of disparagement, and the reader's ear to hear anything of praise from him.

There are people who can write their memoirs with a reasonable amount of honesty, and there are people who simply cannot take themselves seriously enough. I think I might be the first to admit that the sort of reticence which prevents a man from exploiting his own personality is really an inverted sort of egotism.

Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to stone, and a good deed that calls itself by tender names becomes the parent to a curse.

People say both Obama and I have trouble laughing at ourselves. We can't laugh at ourselves. That would be racist!

I know, I'm an idiot!" Leo moaned. "A brilliant idiot, but still an idiot.

When all is summed up, a man never speaks of himself without loss; his accusations of himself are always believed; his praises never.

For alarmingly large chunks of an average day, I am a moron.

My self-absorption warms me; yours boils me.

I'd written Smashed not because I was ambitious and not because writing down my feelings was cathartic (it felt more like playing one's own neurosurgeon sans anesthesia). No. I'd made a habit--and eventually a profession--of memoir because I hail from one of those families where shows of emotions are discouraged.

I think that is the big danger in keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything.

Film is like a personal diary, a notebook or a monologue by someone who tries to justify himself before a camera.

No one to blame! That was why most people led lives they hated, with people they hated. How wonderful to have someone to blame! How wonderful to live with one's nemesis! You may be miserable, but you feel forever in the right. You may be fragmented, but you feel absolved of all the blame for it. Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.