Quotes from Agnes Moorehead

Looks and age determine whether you play leading ladies or characters. And I'm very happy playing character parts.

I inherited the voice from my father, who was a minister. He taught me to speak clearly from babyhood, and probably it was my speech that brought me to Hollywood.

Radio leaves much to the audience's imagination, allows the listeners to fill in so much, provided that the voices convey enough.

I do not eat before I perform.

I think there are people with the genes for being natural performers. Sometimes they go haywire and destroy themselves because of it and because they have no order in their lives.

You can't walk onto a set or stage not knowing your lines and how you are going to play them.

I was born in Boston.

Acting is suggesting, the art lies in leaving room for the audience to identify.

I think backgrounds are important. We all should know what suits us best for what we are, or for the role we want to play, and furnish our homes accordingly.

You can have great freedom, but If you just have liberation without order, you're just bad, that's all. Those people are usually personality actors.

I've played some horrid characters in the 70 pictures or so that I've made. But none of the roles degraded my sex. And I've never made a movie I'd be ashamed to have any of my friends or family see.

I'm a woman of strong convictions.

My father was a minister, and I suppose I take after him. He talked a lot professionally, too.

I'm a Presbyterian minister's daughter.

My mother taught me how to make Boston baked beans. People always buy pork and beans, but my mother will make them from scratch, because she learned as a bride and there's an art to it.

It's an unavoidable truth. Fear of life closes off more opportunities for us than fear of death ever does.

A child is born with a degree of primitive savagery and somebody must discipline it out of him. This Is where the government of the home comes in.

I don't want to live in a desert of dirt.

A child likes discipline. He likes to know somebody cares.

I fear that word, fabulous.

From what I can see people look at television to forget the horrors outside.

My mother's mother came from Dublin and was an extremely fine cook, but we didn't learn, we just admired what she did.

Theater is constant, constant study and constant work. It's a morning to midnight profession.

Theater is a thankless art. When the curtain goes down, that is all. It doesn't really mean anything. Memories are very short, and fame is extremely fleeting.