Ellen McLaughlin Quotes

I think to be courageous, you have to be afraid. For me, it feels very courageous when I go skiing because I'm very, very afraid to ski. It's dangerous! I feel very scared. But when I'm acting, I don't feel very scared.

The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.

People have to really suffer before they can risk doing what they love.

In retrospect, I'm really shocked at how far I put my heart out there on the line with 'Prima Donna'. I seem to have this knack for being able to accomplish that.

I come here not as a polished politician but as a woman who has had her fair share of life's knocks.

Great artists are the ones who have put their entire selves out there to be adored, humiliated, to be picked at, cherished, all of those things, and haven't shied away from that.

All art is an intensely vulnerable gesture, and it is made with no small amounts of risk, and fear. So, I have plenty of sympathy for self-defense mechanisms, especially among artists.

Having cancer empowered me to take more risks. I knew beating cancer was going to shape me, but it wasn't going to be all of me.

I am always naturally drawn to heroines that have human flaws because I enjoy people that have lived their life with courage and make big successes and big failures.

I have to experience all the ghastly, bottomless depths for life for myself; it's for that reason that I went to war, and for that reason I volunteered.

Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.

I tend to go toward things that make me afraid.

I have some great stories. But I am also very human, and I suffered an awful lot.

Creating stuff is hard. But, if that terrifies you, you will just be numb, and you better just stay at home and watch TV and do something else. Move into the woods and live with the trees.

To Dare is to risk losing your foothold for a moment, Not to Dare is to risk losing yourself.

For me, like when you've put yourself out there emotionally, physically, and you've really put yourself on the line, for me, that means I've really done something.

I was born to make mistakes, I ain't scared to take the weight.

That's what life is about: about daring greatly, about being in the arena.

I'm the kind of guy who would say, "Yeah, I'll do that!," and then, when it came down to it, I would be absolutely petrified. Those days have passed me by, but I would do it. If it meant that I was in a scene naked with a woman, or anybody romantic, I'd be into it.

Rather than sitting on the sidelines & hurling judgment & advice, we must dare to show up & let ourselves be seen. This is vulnerability. This is daring greatly.

The work that I'm proudest of is the work that I'm most afraid of.

Art is unthinkable without risk and spiritual self-sacrifice.

Authenticity is also about the courage and the vulnerability to say, "Yeah, I'll try it. I feel pretty uncomfortable and I feel a little vulnerable, but I'll try it!"

Most of the reason we don’t do things is because we’re afraid to fail. I just made a decision one day that I was not not going to do things in my life because of fear.

I always try to push through fear. I won't be crippled by it. People say, "Oh you take such risks", or "You're brave." And I'm like, 'Well, if you knew - inside I'm really frightened!' But the way people navigate fear and pain is fascinating... The more you feel, the stronger the pain. And the more you engage in life, the more you have to lose.