Susan Sarandon Quotes

I think it's very hard to be naked in a scene and not be upstaged by your nipples.

I'm always trying to have a good time on set because that's when things happen. That's when you're playful.

We've legalized marijuana recently. Medical marijuana, but the rest will come.

To each person, their own way of death - with dignity.

You create this situation where you are so dependent on each other. That's especially true for film. In theater, the actor has much more say, much more control, for better or worse.

The directors I consider really great have the ability to recognize when something's going in an unexpected direction and see it as a bonus and be able to go with it, as opposed to locking down what they thought was going to happen.

I had school debt I had to pay off. Sometimes I would do commercials to get me through. And so I kept bumping along like that and learning different things. I knew I wanted to get out on my own. I was just super-curious, and I was a good listener. And that got me through.

I've read some of Kurt Vonnegut letters from when he was young. He was a prisoner of war, and even when he was in his early twenties, there were things mentioned that showed up in his novels. One of the sweetest things in those letters was him wanting to be a writer but doubting himself, not having confidence in himself.

I always think that the difference between film and theater is like the difference between masturbation and making love. Because, in film, you just have to get one moment right; you're practically by yourself. And in theater, you actually have to have a relationship with the audience.

I remember Anthony Perkins saying, "Real is not necessarily interesting." So real is not enough. But what happens as an actor is that you're really trained to listen and to be open and have empathy. It's such a natural consequence that you end up being more political. You can empathize with the mother whose kids are going to be sent to Iraq, or you can emphasize with the mother who is losing their child to a disease. How could you not then be active? So you're automatically drawn to that aspect in the rest of your life.

Happiness is the true beauty weapon.

One of the first lessons I learned as a mom was to forgive myself for not being perfect and to try to prioritize what was really important. I had to really accept very early on that after a while, reading a script and finding the form for the class trip, it was hard to realize which one had priority at times. So I just had to say, "You're doing the best you can, and when you make a mistake, apologize. Your kids know that you love them."

There wasn't space to mood-up. I think Rose Byrne was just extraordinary. Talk about a character that could be really unsympathetic at times. She just jumped in these scenes that go from anger to hysteria to crying to laughing and back to anger. I just marveled.

We have more families at risk with the death penalty. It targets the voiceless, the poor, people of color. And so it's important just to understand what your government is doing and how much they are spending.

It's really hard to find stuff that is original. You pick up scripts and in four pages you know where it's going and the same thing when you are sitting in a theatre, I just rejoice when something unfolds in a way that I'm not conducive.

It's ridiculous that we continue to incarcerate anyone for using a substance that actually causes far less damage than alcohol. No one goes out looking for fights on marijuana. No one dies from marijuana intoxication. And no one should be jailed for possessing marijuana.

That's the thing about independently minded children. You bring them up teaching them to question authority, and you forget that the very first authority they question is you.

Somebody can be the captain of the ship, which allows you to make big mistakes.

It is a different world than when I was growing up, and you started to just kind of maintain at thirty-five and just hope you can hope it together. People are a lot more vital than I am and doing all kinds of things and leading really important movements.

To know that once you decide to look at life outside of the narrow limits of just your world and start to understand that you can make a difference in very simple ways - in volunteering and all the way up to bigger world problems.

Theater for me is terrifying but much more rewarding, because you know what they're seeing. Film is all little bits and pieces. And you can do an amazing job, but if the camera isn't getting it, it doesn't work. And then other times when you feel you really weren't present, and then you see it and somehow it works. So there's a mystery, there's a strange collaboration that takes place with everybody.

Everyone has a responsibility towards this larger family of man, but especially if you're privileged, that increases your responsibility.

It's a very exciting time in the history of this country, to even see people responding to a different way of doing business and really wanting to make a change.

When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.

I hope they're present in their lives and feel some kind of empathy. I think a lot of the mistakes that have been made in the world have been through a lack of empathy. If you can identify with someone else and empathise with someone else, then activism is a short step away, she explained in an interview with Parade.

It's important to just keep wanting whatever it is you want and fight for it, desperately.

I always had a problem with original sin; I always had a problem with the exclusivity of the church and a lot of the things that the nuns taught me.

Children reinvent your world for you.

I'm a native New Yorker. Everything to do with New York feels like my family.

Sometimes when you have to go into something, unless you're gifted and can just turn it on and off like a jukebox, you find someplace where there's nothing going on to get yourself into whatever state your character is entering into.

So I would hope they would develop some kind of habit that involves understanding that their life is so full they can afford to give in all kinds of ways to other people. I consider that to be baseline spirituality.

The only time I've really been away from my kids to do work was doing Shall We Dance because they both were in camp and it was the first time in twenty years that I haven't been with my kids.

So I think (Obama) definitely has convinced people that he stands for change and for hope, and I can't wait to see what he stands for.

I just want my kids to love who they are, have happy lives and find something they want to do and make peace with that. Your job as a parent is to give your kids not only the instincts and talents to survive, but help them enjoy their lives.

When you run into someone in NY it is usually a pleasant surprise. When you run into someone in LA you usually had a car accident.

Kurt Vonnegut wasn't a chatty guy, but when he spoke, it was always clear and very funny, in the way that he wrote, in a very specific kind of combination of word groupings and expressions that lived somewhere else.

My intent is to speak on behalf of those whose voices are less readily heard - children and women at risk

By the time I went to the Catholic University of America, which was the time the priests were all leaving with the nuns, the more I studied about the Bible and how it came about, the more I lost my faith.

I think you have to be ready to switch gears and go with the team as a director, as opposed to superimposing your own strict idea of the story. There are very few directors that can micromanage and still come out with something that's living and breathing on a page. Wes Anderson is one of those.

I think looking at your own life, on- and offscreen, you can motivate anything, or you can delude yourself into anything.

I think where you get into trouble - for instance the mixing of sex and violence - is when you're telling an audience that this horrible thing is enjoyable. The suffering just gets out of hand too much. It becomes pornographic.

How will the bombing of Baghdad, a city of five million, accomplish a regime change?

I think sometimes what happens is that all of this feeling out of control manifests itself in trying to control your body; whether it's an eating disorder or talking about getting your nose fixed, as if that's going to be the solution to all the pressure.

I try to live my life every day in the present, and try not to turn a blind eye to injustice and need.

If Wes Anderson has a very strong cast, he can direct the minutia of that story and still manage to have something that lives and breathes.

I'm happy to be considered desirable. I love it!

When I got the script for Thelma & Louise, when I met with the director, Ridley Scott, I said, "I don't want to do a revenge film. I'm not interested in doing that moment in the script after they shoot the truck, where it says they jump up and down and they're real happy about it".

It will be great when it's not such a big deal when a woman gets a good job.