Shirley Knight Quotes

My work gives me a sense of purpose that I never really had before - it gives me a lot of joy, and it would be wonderful to invite other people to get involved.

When you finish some film and you let it out there, it is completely out of your control. You've done what you've done, you haven't done what you haven't done, and now you are up for judgment. People can be all kinds of ruthless and they can be all kinds of wonderful. The joy in what I do is in the doing of it. And then there is the part where people are either going to see what I've offered and liked it or they are going to see what I've offered and wish they hadn't.

Your agent or manager tells you. They go, "You're out. They're gonna get a new guy." But then I didn't feel bad. I didn't take it personally. Not that I'm competitive at all. But you have pride in that, you know? You want your ratings to be good. But now that I'm 62, I don't really care about the ratings. I don't care about the reviews. I care about the work, and I care about the people that I'm working with, and I try to make the experience for them and myself as good as it can be.

Yes, I’ve made a great deal of dough from my fiction, but I never set a single word down on paper with the thought of being paid for it...I have written because it fulfilled me. ... I did it for the pure joy of the things. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.

I've made a career making stuff that nobody sees, so anything that I can do to help make something that people are going to enjoy and want to see over and over again, then I'm there.

One of the marks of excellent people is that they never compare themselves with others. They only compare themselves with themselves and with their past accomplishments and future potential.

God gave you your own race to run, stop comparing yourself to other people. They have their race and you have yours. Run hard and don't quit.

My work is incredibly important to me personally. It brings me joy and it brings me life and it brings me meaning. It doesn't necessarily have to be important to the people who read it.

I just wanted to perform. I just wanted to perform in whatever capacity, whether it was acting, singing, dancing, comedy - whatever it was, I just loved it and felt at my absolute happiest when I was performing for people.

The thing that I love most about being on stage is making people happy...It's my job to do that, and I enjoy it.

My great joy in working on anything is stepping out in front of the camera and working with the actors.

I feel blessed that I get to be part of entertaining people in any capacity.

It is hard, as you get older finding good scripts, which is why I was thrilled to get Deck the Halls. But I do have a blessed life. I am blessed to have had a rich, wonderful creative success with Sex and the City, most people don't ever have that and I feel fulfilled in that way and so proud, so anything else that comes along is icing on the cake.

I was born to stand out. I don't care whether or not people will find me attractive on screen. That's not why I became an actor. I know that more and more with each new role.

What I've noticed is that people who love what they do, regardless of what that might be, tend to live longer.

I'm not sure I enjoyed doing [Gigi Does It]. I'm cool with just being an actor. If anything, I learned to be proud of being an actor.

I've managed to make a living in a very ridiculous business, and that's fine with me. The trick now is, after you've been in it for a while, you still have to remember to have fun.

Actor is just a strange profession, it really is, that you could be in front of the same people for years, and all of a sudden one thing happens, and it finally clicks.

The five happiest people I have ever met all had this strange little quirk of referring to their jobs as a 'calling.'

I have touched with a sense of art some people-they felt the love and the life. Can you offer me anything to compare to that joy for an artist?

Don’t allow negative people to steal your joy. When you lose your joy, you lose your strength.

Take it upon yourself where you live to make people around you joyful and full of hope.

I think people need to laugh everyday. Whether the economy is good or bad, I think the most important thing is to laugh and to feel positive, if you are laughing at something positive. But if you are laughing at mean jokes then it's a wash.

[Jodie Foster] is one of my favorite actors and people in the business.

Being an actress, it's hard to publish things without people thinking everything is autobiographical.