Montgomery Clift

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The closer we come to the negative, to death, the more we blossom.
- Montgomery Clift
Collection: Death
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Failure and its accompanying misery is for the artist his most vital source of creative energy.
- Montgomery Clift
Collection: Failure
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Look, I'm not odd. I'm just trying to be an actor; not a movie star, an actor.
- Montgomery Clift
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The only line that's wrong in Shakespeare is 'holding a mirror up to nature.' You hold a magnifying glass up to nature. As an actor you just enlarge it enough so that your audience can identify with the situation. If it were a mirror, we would have no art.
- Montgomery Clift
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I don't want to be labeled as either a pansy or a heterosexual. Labeling is so self-limiting. We are what we do - not what we say we are.
- Montgomery Clift
Collection: Self
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If a man don't go his own way, he is nothing.
- Montgomery Clift
Collection: Men
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I have the same problem as Marilyn. We attract people the way honey does bees, but they're generally the wrong kind of people. People who want something from us - if only our energy. We need a period of being alone to become ourselves.
- Montgomery Clift
Collection: Want Something
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Nobody ever lies about being lonely.
- Montgomery Clift
Collection: Lonely
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The sadness of our existence should not leave us blunted, on the contrary--how to remain thin-skinned, vulnerable and stay alive?
- Montgomery Clift
Collection: Sadness
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A man should be what he can do.
- Montgomery Clift
Collection: Men
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Look, if you're playing Romeo and your Juliet is a pig, you find something you can love about pigs!
- Montgomery Clift
Collection: Pigs
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The thing that bugs me is the average woman's complete ignorance of the functional purpose of cosmetics, which is to supplement, not conceal.
- Montgomery Clift
Collection: Ignorance
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Look! Look! If you look really hard at things you'll forget you're going to die.
- Montgomery Clift
Collection: Looks
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James Dean's death had a profound effect on me. The instant I heard about it, I vomited. I don't know why.
- Montgomery Clift
Collection: Profound
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Noah, from 'The Young Lions' (1958), was the best performance of my life. I couldn't have given more of myself. I'll never be able to do it again. Never.
- Montgomery Clift
Collection: Lions
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I keep my family out of my public life because it can be an awful nuisance to them. What's my mother going to tell strangers anyway? That I was a cute baby and that she's terribly proud of me? Nuts. Who cares?
- Montgomery Clift
Collection: Cute
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I have enough money to get by. I'm not independently wealthy, just independently lazy, I suppose.
- Montgomery Clift
Collection: Lazy