Susan Sarandon Quotes

1. Happiness is the true beauty weapon.


2. 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.

3. Do you really have to be the ice-queen intellectual or the slut whore? Isn't there some way to be both?

4. (on Brad Pitt and Geena Davis in Thelma and Louise) The day they did their scenes in bed was the only day they watched the dailies right through, which was suspicious to me. (It) was a very long lunch.




5. 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.

6. (In 1978, after her separation from Chris Sarandon) I no longer believe in marriage. I believe in love and trust and commitment, but not in marriage. Marriage may do something for lawyers and mothers, but not for husbands and wives. I deal with reality, with the feelings I have at the moment. And then I go on from there.

7. 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.

8. I look forward to being older, when what you look like becomes less and less an issue and what you are is the point.





9. I choose projects I can talk about for days because now you do publicity for as long as it took you to shoot the movie.

10. When all you know is pain you don't know that that is not normal. It is not a woman's lot to suffer, even if we've been raised that way. It is not OK to miss a part of your life because of pain and excessive bleeding. It is not OK to be bed-ridden for two-to-three days a month. It is not OK to pain during sex. It is not OK to have major bloating or nausea.

11. I feel I've always been on the outside and always on the edge of an abyss. The women I portray, and the woman I am, are ordinary but maybe find themselves in extra-ordinary circumstances, and what they do is at great cost.



12. I didn't get any stretch marks from my pregnancies, probably because I was so old when I had my kids there was nothing left to stretch.

13. I really respect filmmakers who manage to have lives, do the films the way they want to do them, have a sense of irony and humor about themselves and aren't crippled by the terrible things this business does to you, and how it breaks your heart when films are not released properly.

14. 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.

15. Sexuality…is something that develops and becomes stronger and stronger the older you get…If you can continue to say yes to life and to maintain a certain generosity of spirit, you become more and more of who you are.

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

17. I think the only reason I remain an actor is that you can never quite get it right. So there is a challenge to it.






18. 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.

19. Making love is like hitting a baseball. You just gotta relax and concentrate.





20. If I were 22 and trying to build a career, I don't know who'd be watching the kids as happily as I do. It takes so much to get me to break out of domestic paradise. There's hardly anything that interests me as much as my family.

21. Despite the statistics, nothing is hopeless, nothing is futile. We can do so much to protect children with awareness, knowledge, and a lot of love.

22. Children reinvent your world for you.

23. (on Thelma and Louise) The thing that separates this from a revenge movie with two males, for instance, is that there is a moral price to be paid by me for losing it, as you learn later, because I had been raped. I go into some kind of little trance there and just overreact. But I think the whole rest of the movie from that point on operates under the knowledge for this character that she is going to have to pay a price, and that there is no joy, really, in that revenge. it was important for me, as the movie went on, to try and figure out why these things keep happening, not to make it about getting even. So we tried in all the rest of the scenes to ask questions, or to make it clear, that she's on some kind of search for an understanding of this moment. When I take off all my jewelry and my watch, I think I'm preparing to go into a zone where she feels she had to pay some kind of a price. That was very much in my mind from that moment on in the film.

24. I thought the whole point of feminism is that you're not supposed to be defined by gender. I don't understand the reasoning behind that, because I wouldn't vote for Condoleezza Rice, and I hated Margaret Thatcher.







25. (on Thelma and Louise (1991) after her nomination for best actress, 1992) I was surprised that the film struck such a primal nerve. I knew when we were filming that it would be different, unusual and hopefully entertaining. But shocking? I guess giving women the option of violence was hard for a lot of people to accept.

26. I feel my family's needs are a priority. I'm not comfortable with the idea of serving the many and ignoring my family.


27. People probably think of me as Debbie Downer. I have become kind of a joke in terms of activism for some people. But it is like worrying if your slip is showing when you're fleeing a burning building. You have to prioritize.

28. People will like you for the wrong reasons your entire life, even if you don't have parents who are celebrities. They will like you because you have a car or you have money or your breasts are big.

29. I was told I had an overabundance of original sin.







30. You're so lucky in Ireland, England and Spain. Everyone there already knows what it's like to have inexplicable terrorist violence.

31. I think I've survived because I've gone through a number of incarnations. Sometimes they need somebody sexy. Sometimes they need somebody smart. I've managed to be able to morph myself into parts.

32. Before our kids start coming home from Iraq in body bags and women and children start dying in Baghdad, I need to know, what did Iraq do to us?




33. The thing that's bad about breasts is that you have to choose between having a mind and having breasts. It'd be nice if you could have both. Anyway, I think my breasts have been highly overrated.

34. You guys ask really long questions. In the U.S., they just want to know who you're sleeping with.






35. The largest party in the United States is the 50 percent who don't vote.

36. You have to be careful not to be upstaged by your breasts. I've gotten curvier as I've gotten older. Directors cast the men they want to be and the women they want to have.

37. I'm tired of being labelled anti-American because I ask questions.







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

39. We stand a chance of getting a president who has probably killed more people before he gets into office than any president in the history of the United States.

40. The only thing I can talk about is just forgiving yourself, because I do not have everything together. And so I tell people: No, you should see my house, it's a mess.

41. It's still not easy to find roles that offer more complex images of women.

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

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

44. It's always so painful to watch yourself. That never changes. I still sit there and think: "Oh, that scene is missing? Wasn't I good? What happened there?"




45. I think the good news and the bad news is Hollywood's not political. The only thing they punish you for is getting old and fat.

46. Suffering should not define you as a woman! And just because you're a man it doesn't mean that it doesn't affect you! HELP HER to remove the taboos and the loneliness surrounding this disease; be understanding, show empathy, and don't accuse her of being sensitive, delicate, or overly dramatic - this is a big opportunity for you guys to show that you care and to be a real man!

47. (on Tim Robbins) I think one of the reasons I haven't married Tim is that I hate that couples assumption - that once you're committed to someone you stop treating each other as individuals. I like getting up knowing I am choosing to be with that person.




48. If you walk down the street and see someone in a box, you have a choice. That person is either the other and you're fearful of them, or that person is an extension of your family. And that makes you at home in that world and not fearful. So really it's very self-serving.

49. My children were embarrassed at my Lincoln Center Tribute. I forgot they would show film clips and my children hadn't seen anything. Every time something a little racy would come on like The Hunger (1983), I'd look at my 13-year-old, who was shielding his eyes.


50. I didn't realize that everything was supposed to fall apart at 40. So I just slid past 40 and 50. When you're an outsider and not paying attention to the rules the hurdles are a little lower.

51. I think I'm an actor because I have very strong imagination and empathy. I never studied acting, but those two qualities are exactly the qualities that make for an activist.


52. (on Tim Robbins) I'm certainly not an expert, but Tim and I just celebrated 17 years together, which in Hollywood years I think is 45. I think the key is just focusing on this one person and not keeping one eye on the door to see who might be better.

53. 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.

54. It's still not easy to find roles that offer more complex images of women. I do a lot of smaller parts that I find interesting - as opposed to the big, splashy movies that you get paid more money for.

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






56. Just because I haven't yet had any project surgery, I'm not going to knock it, because I think women have the right to do whatever they want to their bodies that make them feel good about themselves.

57. When I tell people I'm a comedian they say: "Oh, are you funny?" I say: "No, it's not that kind of comedy."



58. (on Tim Robbins) Now, Tim has been really, really busy, and it's been my job now to kind of deal with everything. And trying to figure out how we balance that, logistically it's a nightmare. But these little jobs make it much easier.

59. Every relationship starts out with a dream of what you think it's going to be, and you either have the tool kit when you get to the hard spots where you'll make it through, or you need to move on. 

60. I never think about humiliating myself. I keep focusing on wanting to do a good job.







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

62. Religion is not black and white. It's much more complicated. Spirituality is much bigger than that. God is much bigger than that. I don't believe in a wrathful God. I believe he's much more forgiving and inclusive than some religions. The things that are done in her name or his name are horrible.

63. I remember going to great lengths to celebrate disappointments like not getting a job. I'd take whatever little cash I had and go out to dinner. I saw loss as an opportunity to change direction.






64. 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.


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