Jessica Lange famous quotes

The natural state of motherhood is unselfishness. When you become a mother, you are no longer the center of your own universe. You relinquish that position to your children.
-- Jessica Lange

#Mom #Mother #Children

When you learn not to want things so badly, life comes to you.
-- Jessica Lange

#Life #Want

Acceptance and tolerance and forgiveness, those are life-altering lessons.
-- Jessica Lange

#Life Lesson #Acceptance #Tolerance

One of the things I love about acting is that it reveals a certain something about yourself, but it doesn't reveal your own personal story.
-- Jessica Lange

#Love Yourself #Acting #Stories

I am tortured when I am away from my family, from my children. I am horribly guilt-ridden.
-- Jessica Lange

#Family #Children #Guilt

I regret those times when I've chosen the dark side. I've wasted enough time not being happy.
-- Jessica Lange

#Regret #Dark #Sides

For me, nothing has ever taken precedence over being a mother and having a family and a home.
-- Jessica Lange

#Family #Mother #Taken

To work with a director that has emotional commitment and passion toward the characters, and the piece, and the experiences, it only enriches your work.
-- Jessica Lange

#Passion #Character #Commitment

Allow the diversity to exist. There is nothing wrong with it. Hell, we put up with the religious right-we can put up with transgendered human beings.
-- Jessica Lange

#Religious #Diversity #Hell

Be present. I would encourage you with all my heart just to be present. Be present and open to the moment that is unfolding before you. Because, ultimately, your life is made up of moments. So don't miss them by being lost in the past or anticipating the future.
-- Jessica Lange

#Inspiring #Graduation #Heart

I've worked with some teachers and coaches over the years, but I didn't really study theater or technique or voice or any of that stuff extensively.
-- Jessica Lange

#Teacher #Voice #Years

It was easier to do Shakespeare than a lot of modern movie scripts that are so poorly written.
-- Jessica Lange

#Scripts #Modern #Easier

I've never been a sunny personality. I've never been outgoing. I'm a solitary person.
-- Jessica Lange

#Personality #Sunny #Outgoing

There was that feminist myth that we can do everything. I don't think you can.
-- Jessica Lange

#Thinking #Feminist #Myth

To work on the actual location I think is great. This thing of going to Canada and pretending you're in New York, it's terrible.
-- Jessica Lange

#New York #Thinking #Canada

TV is sort of the only way to go for an actress my age to make a decent salary; with independent films, you just can't.
-- Jessica Lange

#Independent #Age #Way

When I am home for like a two-year stretch, I get antsy, because I want to work.
-- Jessica Lange

#Home #Years #Two

Once I started on 'Frances' I discovered it was literally a bottomless well. It devastated me to maintain that for eighteen weeks, to be immersed in this state of rage for twelve to eighteen hours a day. It spilled all over, into other areas of my life.
-- Jessica Lange

#France #Twelve #Rage

Because Shakespeare's language is so expansive, we're under this misconception that it's difficult. But I discovered that it's easy because it's so brilliantly written. The words are perfect, and the language is intelligent and very emotional.
-- Jessica Lange

#Emotional #Intelligent #Perfect

I have a life that's just been a well of loneliness.
-- Jessica Lange

#Loneliness #Wells

Moments of pure happiness come upon you unexpectedly. Don't be too preoccupied to experience them.
-- Jessica Lange

#Moments #Pure Happiness

It's easy to judge, to think we know for certain the right thing to do. Sometimes, it just isn't so clear.
-- Jessica Lange

#Thinking #Judging #Decision

I've been thinking a lot about next year, which will be the first time in 25 years that I don't have a child at home.
-- Jessica Lange

#Children #Home #Thinking

I worked on my voice for Sweet Dreams, but only to match my speaking voice to Patsy's actual singing voice. That was my way into that character.
-- Jessica Lange

#Dream #Sweet #Character

Families survive, one way or another. You have a tie, a connection that exists long after death, through many lifetimes.
-- Jessica Lange

#Family #Death #Ties

If I had to start over, I'd pursue photography - probably to the exclusion of acting.
-- Jessica Lange

#Photography #Starting Over #Acting

I've got nothing left to lose at this point. The work I've done is out there.
-- Jessica Lange

#Done

This idea of selfishness as a virtue, as opposed to generosity: That, to me, is unnatural.
-- Jessica Lange

#Ideas #Generosity #Selfishness

There are no explanations, there are no answers.
-- Jessica Lange

#Answers #Explanation

Sometimes parts just come along when it's the perfect time for you to do them.
-- Jessica Lange

#Perfect #Sometimes

Photography was a blessing because it filled my time.
-- Jessica Lange

#Photography #Blessing #Filled

To my mind the election was stolen by George Bush and we have been suffering ever since under this man's leadership.
-- Jessica Lange

#Leadership #Men #Mind

I never felt like I belonged in Minnesota when I was growing up there. That's why I was out the door as soon as I turned 18.
-- Jessica Lange

#Growing Up #Doors #Growing

I love being a mother. I loved being a daughter, a sister, a wife. I love being a woman with men. I love having given birth.
-- Jessica Lange

#Daughter #Mother #Men

I like playing characters who are out there on the edge, where they can explode at any moment or fall off the precipice.
-- Jessica Lange

#Fall #Character #Moments

I have made decisions based from purely an actor's point of view.
-- Jessica Lange

#Views #Decision #Actors

At a certain age, death becomes familiar to you-or a loss becomes familiar-the tragedies that are more commonplace in life.
-- Jessica Lange

#Loss #Tragedy #Corny

All through life I've harbored anger rather than expressed it at the moment.
-- Jessica Lange

#Anger #Moments

I have been a waitress, and I was a damn fine waitress too, let me tell you.
-- Jessica Lange

#Waitress #Fine #Let Me

There can be no better measure of our governance than the way we treat our children, and no greater failing on our part than to allow them to be subjected to violence, abuse or exploitation.
-- Jessica Lange

#Children #Abuse #Way

Yes, and you should question your government.
-- Jessica Lange

#Government #Politics #Should

I like to work in costumes, makeup, and hair that allow me tremendous freedom.
-- Jessica Lange

#Makeup #Hair #Costumes

I never just slide through anything. I explore everything to the fullest, whether good or bad.
-- Jessica Lange

#Slides

If Ive got a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt, thats usually a good day for me.
-- Jessica Lange

#Good Day #Jeans #Pairs

I have always followed the most passionate course.
-- Jessica Lange

#Passionate

It is an embarrassing time to be an American. It really is. It's humiliating.
-- Jessica Lange

#Embarrassing #Humiliating

...we must remain hopeful that for our children and our children's children, that we are not a warring nation, but we will embrace and practice true compassion and honor the ideals of peace and freedom, and we will not give up.
-- Jessica Lange

#Peace #Children #Giving Up

What I love about photography, and it's the same thing I love about acting, really, is that it forces you, like, right into the moment, where you can't be distracted, where you can't be, like, thinking about other things or ahead of yourself or behind yourself.
-- Jessica Lange

#Photography #Thinking #Acting

In families there is always the mythology. My father died when my kids were quite young still, and yet they still tell his stories. That is how a person lives on.
-- Jessica Lange

#Children #Father #Kids

It comes down to something really simple: Can I visualize myself playing those scenes? If that happens, then I know that I will probably end up doing it.
-- Jessica Lange

#Simple #Scene #Ends

So much of my sense of who I am is tied to mothering. When they left home, I fell into a huge, empty, black hole. Your children are grown and your career has slowed down - all the stuff that took up so much attention is gone, and you're left with expansive time and space.
-- Jessica Lange

#Children #Home #Who I Am

Sometimes the odds are against you-the director doesn't know what the hell he's doing, or something falls apart in the production, or you're working with an actor who's just unbearable.
-- Jessica Lange

#Fall #Odds #Unbearable

Successful model? That's a myth. The year I modeled was the most painful year of my life. Editors would always talk to you in the third person as though you were merely a piece of merchandise.
-- Jessica Lange

#Successful #Editors #Years

The worst is when I talk myself into something. Sometimes you take things because you want to work with a certain actor, or you want to work with a director, even if the script or the part's not that great.
-- Jessica Lange

#Directors #Actors #Want

There's something magical still about it when I get in a darkroom, and you've shot a roll of film and you develop it and you look at your negatives, and there's, like, imagery there. That always stuns me.
-- Jessica Lange

#Looks #Film #Shots

I never think of the future. I never imagine what comes next.
-- Jessica Lange

#Thinking #Next #Imagine

The only place I've felt was really my home is my cabin up north. There's something in the water there that connects me to that place. There's also this sense of isolation and loneliness about it that I've never been able to shake.
-- Jessica Lange

#Loneliness #Home #Water

I do love acting. But to work as a photojournalist would have been extraordinary.
-- Jessica Lange

#Acting #Photojournalists #Extraordinary

My one big regret was that there were no scenes that I could play with Eva Marie Saint. I hounded them. I said figure out some way, I just want to play a scene with this woman. But there was no way to make it work.
-- Jessica Lange

#Regret #Play #Saint

Box office success has never meant anything. I couldn't get a film made if I paid for it myself. So I'm not 'box office' and never have been, and that's never entered into my kind of mind set.
-- Jessica Lange

#Office #Mind #Kind

For me, acting was always a way to explore emotions - to dip into the well and really try to reach rock bottom down there. That was the most exciting part of it. I hadn't found anything that really allowed me to do that until I came upon acting.
-- Jessica Lange

#Rocks #Acting #Trying

What can I say? I hate Bush; I despise him and his entire administration, everything he represents and everything he has tried to do, not only internationally, which is horrific, but domestically as well. In my country the atmosphere is poisoned. Unbreathable for those of us who are not on the right. So thank you for inviting me to this festival and allowing me to leave there for a few days.
-- Jessica Lange

#Country #Hate #Atmosphere

I had never done Shakespeare before, but I don't think you can be an actor and not do it. There were moments when I thought, I'm just not going to be able to pull this off.
-- Jessica Lange

#Thinking #Actors #Done

I never shot on sets, but if I was traveling somewhere or on location, I would always have my camera, and I'd always be - it's that kind of fly on the wall approach to photography, though. I don't engage the subject. I like to sneak around, skulk about in the dark.
-- Jessica Lange

#Photography #Wall #Dark

If I didn't have children I'd be a much better actress. I wouldn't be so distracted. I could pour 100 percent of my energies into it, to promote the investigation which acting is.
-- Jessica Lange

#Children #Acting #Energy

To stay interested in acting, I have to keep trying stuff I've never done before.
-- Jessica Lange

#Trying #Acting #Done

Don't be absent from your own life.
-- Jessica Lange

#Absent

I am coming to the end of acting. I have a list: another stage production, maybe one or two more movies, one more season of American Horror Story. . . and then that is it for me. Because I think that's enough. I want to go out with a bang. . . or should I say, a scare?
-- Jessica Lange

#Thinking #Two #Acting

I could be making a lot more money now if I had chosen a different kind of movie, but none of that matters to me... I've done the parts I wanted to do.
-- Jessica Lange

#Different #Done #Matter

Everything is transient. Everything is constantly changing. The only thing we have is now.
-- Jessica Lange

#Change