Circus Life Quotes

Motherhood has relaxed me in many ways. You learn to deal with crisis. I've become a juggler, I suppose. It's all a big circus, and nobody who knows me believes I can manage, but sometimes I do.

I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness.

I would have done well as a gypsy child, I think. A circus baby. I coulda played a great street urchin or ragamuffin. Or just been one. I certainly liked entertaining people and making jokes, but I don't know necessarily if that's what your child is prone to that you should necessarily put them in a real working industry at six years old.

Damn everything but the circus! ...damn everything that is grim, dull, motionless, unrisking, inward turning, damn everything that won't get into the circle, that won't enjoy. That won't throw it's heart into the tension, surprise, fear and delight of the circus, the round world, the full existence.

I was born and raised in New York and I'm of an age where I want to just be home. But, you know, when you sign up to be an actor it's like joining the circus and the circus is not always going to be in your hometown.

If I had been born in the circus, my parents would have pushed me on that little high wire at four years old. That's when the body is most limber to learn those acrobatics.

I always knew from books and shows that the lives of circus artists are not easy, but spending time and learning from them made me realise the amount of effort they put in and how they constantly jostle between life and death.

The trapeze was my first love. To me, it's normal. It's all I've ever known. But when I see other people's upbringings, I think, 'Hmm... mine was rather unconventional. Quite different!'

My family traveled with a whole community to European festivals. My mum did gymnastics, freak show performances, and swung fire in the circus, so I followed her footsteps.

I started performing in 1950 at the age of 16 when I joined the Burton Lester's Midgets as a performer. Shortly after, I became a DJ with Mecca Organization before joining Billy Smart's Circus as a clown and shadow Ringmaster.

So we see Edward as a young man on the road and he meets a giant and he brings the giant to a circus where he meets a Miss Calloway. He sees the woman of his dreams and I am the only one who knows who she is.

I think I'll be a clown when I get grown.... There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off.

I grew up in a bus, traveled with various circuses and freak shows. I was a trapeze artist, and that was my dream. We just traveled the whole world, me and my mom and my little brothers and sisters. It was an adventure.

I have become rather like King Midas, except that everything turns not into gold but into a circus.

I've worked behind counters serving food, and I've lived on the circus train, and I've led bicycle tours in Eastern Europe and the Balkans and Russia. I've been a key liner for a newspaper, I've done typesetting. Oh, all sorts of things.

I want to be a traveling circus in that big-league uniform, like everybody else.

When I was a kid, I worked in the circus. It was a touring circus that was owned by a man named Terrell Jacobs. It was just one big tent, and he was a lion tamer. He didn't have any kids, but the bit was that I would dress up as his son in an identical outfit.

When I was little, one of my father's friends owned a circus. For four absolutely incredible summers, I found myself being the only boy in Ireland who didn't dream of running away with the circus. I was in it!

I'm certainly a real homebody. But the truth is that I understand that desire to, in a way, go join the circus. That's what got me out of Long Island and into show business. I was like, 'I'm just going to have an adventure. I want to be a person that isn't surrounded by their mail and their cat.'

Living as an actor is rather like living life on the trapezes in a circus. Every time you jump on, you have to pray that, when the time comes for you to jump off, there is another trapeze swinging your way.

In a way, all actors are gypsies, or much like a traveling circus.

It's a circus life, the movies. It's a lot of travelling, a lot of antisocial hours; there's a lot of it that's about escaping from life.

It's weird: making a movie is like life compacted into three months. You have these very intense relationships with people, and you talk to them every day - your editor, the casting people, music people, your actors - then it ends. It's like a circus life.

It's like running away to join the circus, everyone wants to do it when they're young but then you grow up and get a proper job. But somebody's got to do it or you wouldn't have the circus.

My house is basically a trailer. I live a circus lifestyle. I'm always moving. It's not always easy for people that live with me, but that's the path I chose.