Sandra Bernhard Quotes

I'm a lot happier in people's living rooms weekly than I think I would be if I was really, really relying on a movie career to keep me fulfilled and excited.

I haven't worked with people who are jealous or competitive. That's a particularly deadly attitude to have when you're working on a film.

Early in my career, a critic said that I needed to "explain" the irony in my work, suggesting that I needed to add text next to the images to help people understand what I was trying to say. At first I was dismayed that I wasn't making work with a clear enough message. That's when I realized that that was the exact opposite of what I wanted to do - that I wasn't responsible for a misinterpretation of my work, that there should be some ambiguity to it. They either got it, or they didn't.

Poverty is a career for lot's of well paid people

TV writing is for people who hate being alone more than they hate writing.

I think it's unfortunate how many people today try to build up their own careers by denigrating the work of others.

In the beginning of any career, in every job, people are always forcing you to the middle.

[Sundance is] giving people a chance - many first-time filmmakers. It carries that weight - if you bring something here, people connect with it and it can launch a career.

In my career, I've had people talking about different things many times, but then not get nominated.

Just in terms of being able to be a professional artist, but also it's nice to not have to dread introductions. "What you do for a living?" It used to be easier just to tell people that I was a magazine illustrator than try to explain that I did comics, but not the kind of comics that they were used to, and no, it's not pornography, etc. And now people even of our parents' generation are familiar with the term "graphic novel," which is kind of amazing.

There are two types of bands - there are the ones that are basically solo projects anyways, where there's clearly the one guy who's driving the ship and everyone else is just along for the ride. And then there was my band, where you have a few very disparate-taste, creative people who kind of meet in the middle somewhere.

When I'm working as a director, I might have an idea of my own but I'm also trying to get great ideas out of my actors. Directing is much more psychological - it's a lot like being a general. And you have to be organized. While you're making a film, you have between 2 and 500 people asking you a billion questions.

I'm a lot more selective with work these days. My perfect plan is to do one movie every nine months. It would have to be a project that I found inspiring. It would also have to include other actors and a director I am inspired to work with.

Most people, if they're doing really well in their career, often don't have the right intimacy with their partner, or they're doing great in their home life, but their finances are a mess.

It's amazing, especially coming from the small city of Paterson, to have all of those people just being behind you and supporting your career and understanding where you come from.

I don't have a lot of thrilling anecdotes about my career or personal life. All the stuff that is interesting is private and I wouldn't want people to know.

Obviously I want my music on the radio and I want my record to do well, but I also have a totally different career, so a lot of people who are in music are just in music and can dedicate all their time to that and I can't do that, so I really want to have both things and I'm just trying to figure out how.

I feel lucky in that the same way I've surrounded myself with people I'm creatively comfortable with, I've surrounded myself with people who are accepting of the way that I look.

I've surprised myself and made another career change. I had a great time at Google, met lots of interesting people, but I met some folks outside doing something completely outrageous, and after much anguish decided to leave Google.

All I can to, and the only sense of control I have over this crazy moviemaking business, is to pick things that I like with people that I love and respect, and then just hope everything else works out.

I have no friends and I never leave my house. You just have to make a choice to just refuse to be involved with things that could get you in trouble. It's easy when you feel upset or depressed about something to want to go to a club and want to drink, but instead I just force myself to sit and feel it and deal with it, and try to grow from it, because I don't want to go down that path. I'm one of the most isolated people in existence right now, but it's worth it because if I wasn't making that decision I would be throwing away my career.

I knew how the suits used to talk about the artists, with barely concealed contempt. So I knew what was waiting for me round the corner. Because I wasn't one of those very unusual people like Neil Diamond or Elton John, whose careers just seem to span the decades. I knew I wasn't one of them.

Advertising agencies come to you and they are great fans, they are great creative people themselves, but they ask you to do something, and you say, "Well, we will, we'll create something together." And it is work. It's like you're doing something and they're saying, "Change this" and "Change that." It's not hard, horrible work, but creatively it's not just freedom.

When auditioning, I try to imagine that I'm the only person that they [directors] are seeing that day because it can be overwhelming, in the same sense that it could be overwhelming if you try to fulfil everyone's expectations rather than the people closest to you in the creative process, be it your director, or fellow actors and the writers. So, that's kind of it - I try to trick myself into believing that no one has ever gone there before.

The old forms of entertainment are not extinct. Live performances are the pinnacle. If you can something that people want to see live, then you have a great career.