Quotes from Louise Brooks

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.

The tragedy of film history is that it is fabricated, falsified, by the very people who make film history.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

I have been taking stock of my 50 years since I left Wichita. How I have existed fills me with horror for I failed in everything. Spelling, arithmetic, writing, swimming, tennis, golf, dancing, singing, acting, wife, mistress, whore, friend, even cooking. And I do not excuse myself with the usual escape of not trying. I tried with all my heart.

If I ever bore you, it'll be with a knife.

Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.

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

For two extraordinary years I have been working on it - learning to write - but mostly learning how to tell the truth. At first it is quite impossible. You make yourself better than anybody, then worse than anybody, and when you finally come to see you are 'like' everybody - that is the bitterest blow of all to the ego. But in the end it is only the truth, no matter how ugly or shameful, that is right, that fits together, that makes real people, and strangely enough - beauty...

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

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

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.

And so I have remained, in relentless pursuit of truth and excellence, an unforgiving executioner of the bogus, an abomination to all but those few people who have overcome their aversion to truth in order to free whatever is good in them.

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