Dawn French Quotes

It's kind of true, you do disappear off the planet if you are a middle-aged woman, but that has some advantages as well.

When you hit your 40s, you're walking around, and you realize, 'Oh, my God, men don't look at me anymore.' Or sometimes you can feel really good, and then you look in the mirror, and you're like, 'Oh, Jesus, that's my face now!' But I have tell you that something happened and shifted inside of me.

A lot of middle-aged women are children still trying to find their way.

In our society, as people pass out of young adulthood, they tend to relate to themselves more in terms of what they are no longer than what they are now, and that's psychologically low-grade devastating.

I really just want to change the way women think about themselves. A lot of young girls are quite lost.

Middle Age At forty-five, What next, what next? At every corner, I meet my Father, My age, still alive.

I don't think there is a woman in her 40s who doesn't, kind of, examine herself in the mirror.

What happens at 50, more or less, you lose what you need to create another person, to sustain another person; you keep what you need to sustain yourself. And there's something wonderful about that.

But this show reminds me that there are other aspects to me besides the fact that I'm a funny chick.

I can't stand that - those women in 'Waiting to Exhale' now. I can't stand them. But that's because I'm 53 and not 33. But what they were experiencing at 33, I identified with it.

I can't stand outside myself and be anybody else.

I'm always interested in how people, myself included, have ideas of themselves, of how they thought they would be, or of how they want to be seen. And the older you get, the world keeps telling you different things about yourself. And how people either adjust to those things and let go of adolescent notions. Or they dig in deeper.

At midlife, I think a woman has more in common with her teenage children than anybody else. We all are kind of uncertain. We realize for the first time in either our lives or decades that we're in charge now.

If I saw my 15-year-old self now, I'd think I wasn't that bad, but back then I perceived myself as awful.

The actor has a constant problem of personal identity.

I love being an advocate for women as we get older so that we can feel comfortable with ourselves.

Earlier in my career, I was really tight, really together, and knew who I was and I was confident. I kind of feel in between now.

You watch yourself age and it's hard to feel like a sex symbol.

A significant number of women who have been ill or had marital issues feel they have no value, and society is so keen on telling us that's the case.

Forty is brilliant and I love it. I'm happier now than when I was 20.

If I pop off and do something drastic, everyone's going to realise because they know I'm 50. Anyway, middle-aged women are sensational.

You know when I was 20 and 30, they were insecurities. Now they're just a new normal. I'm 60 years old, so my expectations of who I am and how I look and how I show up in the world had to shift. Not because I couldn't help it, or not because I did anything wrong, but because I had to get into the natural flow of my being as a woman.

Self-esteem is such a challenging issue for young women.

I always did think that when I turned 40, I'd start coming into my own.

As social beings we live with our eyes upon our reflection, but have no assurance of the tranquillity of the waters in which we see it.