Angela Lansbury Quotes

I would have found something because I love to entertain people. I had the option to take the rest of the year off. But I said the songs on my last solo album, '24 Karat Gold,' mean so much to me. I need to get out there and sing them.

Once, after finishing a picture, I thought I would stop for awhile, take a trip, do things-the next time I thought of this, I found five years had gone by.

Our artistic heroes tend to be those self-exercisers, like Picasso, and Nabokov, and Wallace Stevens, who rather defiantly kept playing past dark.

As long as I'm blessed and/or cursed to be alive, it's hard to see a time when I won't be making music.

I want to die painting.

My work is not my life. I started writing quite late, I didn't have that 'writing is everything, my art is all.' You have to be able to recognise the difference between the two.

When I stop working, I go out and start working again. Most people paint a picture, or whatever they do, and go home. For me, it has to be continuous.

I get to wake up every day and create music. And even when it's a tough moment as far as career ups and downs, it's always something you're passionate about, and it's a beautiful way to spend your life.

Acting means living, it's all I do and all I'm good at. If I weren't getting paid well, I would still be acting in a small troupe somewhere.

If you're an artist, you need to work. It doesn't matter how old you are, who you are. It doesn't matter if you're 12: if you draw, you draw. If you're 85 and you paint, you paint.

If you want to be an actor, you must have total, ruthless commitment to your art. Don't be ambitious for fame or TV or movies. Art is a jealous mistress and will brook no competitors. Study all the time. Never stop reading. Never stop learning speeches. It will fill you up - define and refine you.

I've never not been pleased with one of my albums. I figure because it's spoken word, there will be people who relate to it, and people who don't, so I don't worry about any of that. I've been doing it for over twenty years. I've always written because it was something I had to do, never for the glory.

The fact that I get to do what I love and 14 years in, I'm still doing it - I don't know how anything could get better.

I gave myself over to music and art a long time ago, so I don't get to relax and I don't get to sit still. The best I can do is constantly create my own environment so it benefits what I need to accomplish in the next step.

I am not retiring. Writers don't retire. Writers never stop writing.

In a way, being an opera singer is like being a very romantic sixteen-year-old who falls in love with great passion and conviction every month.

I want to keel over on stage playing King Lear at age 99 or something like that.

I love every aspect of the performing arts and can't imagine myself doing anything different. I give my heart to every project.

I like playing the same person over and over again. I've done shows for over a year on Broadway, and I never get bored.

Wherever my career takes me, I know I'll love getting there, because ever since I was 2 1/2 years old, I knew that this was all I ever wanted to do.

Part of the joy I'm discovering in acting is the fact that it's uncomfortable to me, that it's challenging, and the possibilities of always being able to improve on something, of always being able to try something new, it's intriguing and exciting.

I hope to live all my life for my art, without abandoning my principles one iota, without . . . having painted as much as you can cover with your hand, to please somebody or in order to sell the picture more easily.

There's no retirement for an artist,its your way of living so theres no end to it.

Photography is not something you retire from.

I'll always be making music. I'd like to do it my whole life - although I also love words and want to write short stories. But right now, my songs are kind of my short stories.