The theater is a baffling business, and a shockingly wasteful one when you consider that people who have proven their worth, who have appeared in or been responsible for successful plays, who have given outstanding performances, can still, in the full tide of their energy, be forced, through lack of opportunity, to sit idle season after season, their enthusiasm, their morale, their very talent dwindling to slow gray death. Of finances we will not even speak; it is too sad a tale.
Ilka ChaseWe've surrounded the most vital and commonplace human function with a vast morass of taboos, convention, hypocrisy, and plain claptrap.
Ilka ChaseKeeping your coat on indoors in Russia, no matter how public the place, is far worse than keeping your hat on as the flag goes by. It is worse than going into a Catholic church in Spain with your upper arms bare. It is worse than telling a mother her baby bores you.
Ilka ChaseNext to a good meal and possibly a long night's sleep the greatest morale builder ... is clothes.
Ilka ChaseOn the whole, I haven't found men unduly loath to say, 'I love you.' The real trick is to get them to say, 'Will you marry me?
Ilka ChaseI think it is every woman's duty to make herself as attractive as her time and means permit. After all, there you are, in your person- a living symbol of the progress of art, science and imagination. To be as attractive as we can be is almost a civic duty; there are so many sad and ugly things in the world that I think women should say to themselves humbly, not with vanity, 'I will try to be as pretty as I can, so that when people look at me, they will feel refreshed. I will make an effort to be easy on the eye.'
Ilka Chase