Vanessa Redgrave
Theater and poetry were what helped people stay alive and want to go on living.Collection: Poetry
Integrity is so perishable in the summer months of success.Collection: Success
Ask the right questions if you're to find the right answers.
The stories of the first refugees that I ever came across in literature - that lots of people ever came across - were in 'The Iliad': the escape of Aeneas with his father on his back, the Trojans, from their burning city, and the defeat of their kingdom and what they had to do to try and find safety.
A film can open hearts and minds that have been closed, for whatever reasons.
I've still got to do something to help, however tiny it is. I always think of the old Hebrew saying, which is translated roughly into, 'He who saves one life saves the world,' because it's pretty ghastly to think of all the people we're not saving.
I got my first film break because the director Karel Reisz saw me at a small theater party.
I've been working for refugees for years and years and years.
A theater is being given over to market forces, which means that a whole generation that should be able to do theater as well as see it is being completely deprived.
Shakespeare lets us see real people undergoing real processes, with real feelings.
The society Shakespeare knew was heading for tremendous change, and he seems to have recognized that and written about it in a coded way. I understand those codes, I think.
We are child-bearers primarily, and we are the weaker sex, and once we've given birth to our children, our life is by necessity bound to them. I wouldn't advocate it any other way.
Politics is about divisions. Wherever you come in on the subject, there are divisions.
I've identified all my life with refugees.
I think everybody, including myself, are in danger of losing our humanity.
Just being alive, staying human, I think that's infinitely precious.
I don't think my life has been badly lived - but I don't think of it that way. And nor should I.
My uncles and my father were all in the Royal Navy. One of my uncles, as a matter of fact, was drowned in the Sea of Singapore, having been fighting for the Royal Navy behind enemy lines, Japanese lines, in the hinterland of Singapore.
People talk about preaching to the converted, which is total codswallop rubbish. There is no such thing as being converted forever - absolutely no such thing.
You can get numbed. People can get hardened. It's not their fault; they just get hardened. News media get hardened. Proprietors get even harder.
I didn't plan that there'd be this awful situation in which our European governments, just to start the story off, breaking the Geneva conventions on the protection on the human rights of refugees.
I thought my story, my experiences as a 2-year-old 'evacuee' from London at the outset of the war, could be important. What happened to me as a child was very light compared to what happened to many children, but... in Britain, there are so many people who just don't know our history.
Principles aren't something you hear much from politicians these days. Have you noticed? Right across the board, leaders, whatever the political coloring, avoid talking about laws; they avoid talking about principles. They talk about 'our values.' But values can change, and all our packets of 'values' seem to be getting smaller.
I don't want to spend my last few whatever it is, months or years on this earth, giving speeches.
I acted with Albie at Stratford-on-Avon in the 1959 season. We in the acting company tended to hang out at the pub known as the Dirty Duck.
The notion of 'building a career' had never been heard or dreamed of when I was young.
In my early days, I auditioned a lot. Mostly, I didn't get anywhere.
I liked film-making, but the most difficult thing was the editing. I found it tormentingly difficult.
Ask the right questions if you're going to find the right answers.Collection: Asking Questions
The people I admire most are those who struggle for everyone.Collection: Struggle
We all come to the theater with baggage; The baggage of our daily lives, the baggage of our problems, the baggage of our tragedies, the baggage of being tired. It doesn't matter what age you are. But if our hearts get opened and released - well, that's what theater can do, and does sometimes, and everyone is thankful when that happens.Collection: Tired
You can't be striving to please; you must be striving to get to the heart of the matter.Collection: Heart
I think the theatre is as essential to civilization as safe, pure water.Collection: Thinking
The arts stop society going rotten and mad.Collection: Art
A conservative frame of mind is very limiting for an actor, and a human being, too.Collection: Mind
What a script says that isn't dialogue is as important as the spoken word.Collection: Important
As a mother you have got to have a view for now and a view for the future.Collection: Mother
One of the joys of cinema is that, given the right circumstances, and the genius director, an incredibly wonderfully actor can become the embodiment of his character.Collection: Character
I've opened my mouth on a lot of subjects. And I thought the more prestige you get, I'd have the power to do what I like. It's not true.Collection: Power
Theater helps people keep sane.Collection: People
The stage is actor's country. You have to get your passport stamped every so often or they take away your citizenship.Collection: Country
How can there be democracy if the leadership in the United States and Britain don't uphold the values which my father's generation fought the Nazis, millions of people gave their lives against the Soviet Union's regime, didn't they? Because of what? Democracy. And what democracy meant. No torture, no camps, no detention forever or without trial, without charges. In solitary confinement. Those techniques which are not just alleged, they have actually been written about by the FBI. I don't think it's being far left - I hope that I'm wrong to consider that it's far left to uphold the rule of law.Collection: Father
I give myself to my parts as to a lover.Collection: Giving
The great writers like Chekhov know that tragedy and laughter are just a few steps from each other ... but it took me a long time as an actress to learn that. Actually Arthur Miller taught me in the Seventies. We were making a CBS TV drama of his play Playing for Time about Auschwitz but the characters were laughing. It was a big insight for me to realise that that was what's called gallows humour, in this case worse than the gallows, that humans need to laugh and make jokes in order to survive.Collection: Laughter
A deeper truth the camera can see can be more surprising than even the director imagined it could be. That's a wonderful thing that grows and happens in films.Collection: Wonderful
What I didn't understand was that the personal and the political go together. I felt at the time I had to sacrifice my children's present for their future. It seemed an either/or. I didn't realise that by being with one's own children I would have had a better understanding of the ones who are not my own. I was thinking of them but I didn't spend the time that they needed from me. It's a tribute to them that they came out so well.Collection: Children
One must never comment as an actor, never show that a character is shallow or vindictive, but let that be conveyed. I mean, none of us thinks of ourselves as being vindictive or shallow - perhaps we should.Collection: Character
On one occasion, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jeremy Irons and myself were due to appear at the Sarajevo film festival and were turned off a UN plane on orders from Geneva. We had to get local journalists to transport the films in for us. I tell you this only to demonstrate that festivals can be a lifeline. But, after all the difficulties I'd had in getting there, in 1996 I found myself being flown in on a four-seater RAF plane as an official guest, endorsed by the British Embassy. Ironically, the film I was to present was Mission: Impossible.Collection: Order
A theater is being given over to market forces, which means that a whole generation that should be able to do theater as well as see it is being completely deprivedCollection: Mean
My dear colleagues, I thank you very very much for this tribute to my work. I think that Jane Fonda and I have done the best work of our lives, and I salute you and I pay tribute to you, and I think you should be very proud that in the last few weeks you have stood firm and you have refused to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and to their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression. And I pledge to you that I will continue to fight against anti-Semitism and fascism.Collection: Thinking