Louise Brooks » Quotes

Love is a publicity stunt, and making love - after the first curious raptures - is only another petulant way to pass the time waiting for the studio to call.

Most beautiful dumb girls think they are smart and get away with it, because other people, on the whole, aren't much smarter.

I learned how to act by watching Martha Graham dance and I learned how to dance by watching (Charles Chaplin) act."

When I went to Hollywood in 1927, the girls were wearing lumpy sweaters and skirts . . . I was wearing sleek suits and half naked beaded gowns and piles and piles of furs.

A well dressed woman, even though her purse is painfully empty, can conquer the world.

The great art of films does not consist in descriptive movement of face and body, but in the movements of thought and soul transmitted in a kind of intense isolation.

(on W.C. Fields) He was an isolated person. As a young man, he stretched out his hand to Beauty and Love and they thrust it away. Gradually he reduced reality to exclude all but his work, filling the gaps with alcohol. He was also a solitary person. Years of traveling alone around the world with his juggling act taught him the value of solitude and the release it gave his mind.

(on Margaret Sullavan) Do you know my favorite actress? She was very special in her appearance, her voice was exquisite and far away, almost like an echo. She was an excellent actress, completely unique. This wonderful voice of hers -- strange, fey, mysterious -- like a voice singing in the snow.

I have a gift for enraging people, but if I ever bore you, it'll be with a knife.

In my dreams I am not crippled. In my dreams, I dance.

I have a gift for enraging people, but if I ever bore you it will be with a knife.

There is no other occupation in the world that so closely resembled enslavement as the career of a film star.

The great art of films does not consist of descriptive movement of face and body but in the movements of thought and soul transmitted in a kind of intense isolation.

Every actor has a natural animosity toward every other actor, present or absent, living or dead.

I never gave away anything without wishing I had kept it; nor kept it without wishing I had given it away.