Quotes from Jeanne Moreau

Life is given to you like a flat piece of land and everything has to be done. I hope that when I am finished, my piece of land will be a beautiful garden, so there is a lot of work.

When I'm acting, I'm two beings. There's the one monitoring the distance between myself and the camera, making sure I hit my marks, and there is the one driven by this inner fire, this delicious fear.

I don't think success is harmful, as so many people say. Rather, I believe it indispensable to talent, if for nothing else than to increase the talent.

If you're extremely, painfully frightened of age, it shows.

I've never worried about age.

I need, absolutely, to be alone.

Death is an absolute mystery. We are all vulnerable to it, it's what makes life interesting and suspenseful.

Age doesn't protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.

Life is given to you like a flat piece of land and everything has to be done. I hope that when I'm finished, my piece of land will be a beautiful garden.

As long as you don't make waves, ripples, life seems easy. But that's condemning yourself to impotence and death before you are dead.

If you want to live your life through to the end, you have to live dangerously.

Knowing how to die is knowing how to live. What is death anyway? It's the outcome of life.

The life you had is nothing. It is the life you have that is important.

My aim in life is not to judge.

Sometimes the directors were afraid of what they brought out of me.

You're responsible for yourself as an actress, you know that your personal growth goes through that alchemy, and you give as much importance to your life as you do to your acting.

The cliche is that life is a mountain. You go up, reach the top and then go down.

You should not separate your life from what you do.

You don't have to be a wreck. You don't have to be sick. One's aim in life should be to die in good health. Just like a candle that burns out.

All fiction becomes autobiographical when the author has true talent.

I work more now because at this time of my life I am not disturbed from my aim by outside pressures such as family, passionate relationships, dealing with 'who am I?' - those complications when one is searching for one's self.

I am subject to very powerful lows. When you have highs, you have terrible lows. When you pinpoint that you are responsible for everything that happens to you, it is very frightening.

During rehearsals I am confronted by things very mysterious. I have terrific fights with inner demons, and it's more painful than it ever was.

I don't think success is harmful, as so many people say. Rather, I believe it indispensable to talent, if for nothing else than to increase the talent.