Cicely Tyson Quotes
As far as 'Jane Pittman,' I don't know that I could verbalize, to this day, what I felt once I got into that role. I did a tremendous amount of research. I need to feel as though I am in the person's skin.
Quotes to Explore
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I seriously object to seeing on the screen what belongs in the bedroom.
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It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did.
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I'm drawn to villains that are three-dimensional and raw and that I can kind of see in my own life.
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I had a sense of what leadership meant and what it could do for you. So am I surprised that I am sitting up here on the 62nd floor of Rockefeller Plaza? No.
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People say I'm extravagant because I want to be surrounded by beauty. But tell me, who wants to be surrounded by garbage?
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On the Day of Atonement, Jews are commanded to seek forgiveness from the people we have hurt.
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A hundred struggle and drown in the breakers. One discovers the new world. But rather, ten times rather, die in the surf, heralding the way to that new world, than stand idly on the shore.
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Library campaigners are not prepared to stand by and watch something they cherish be dismantled brick by brick.
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Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on, it adds up.
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I love the folk-rock of the Seventies and the pop of the Eighties.
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The Arab representatives and their followers were not interested in the persecuted millions throughout the world; they were fixed on a political agenda that distracted the world from their own serious shortcomings in the human-rights department.
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For nine years I worked to change what was hairdressing then into a geometric art form with color, perm without setting which had never been done before.
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I was 19, and I thought I should settle down and get a real job, and what was I doing living this dream world?
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Who is ready to settle for five minutes when three hours does nicely?
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I think the fact that I made enough noise in the world that I might be remembered is an amazing achievement. You can't ask for more than that.
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Actors who perhaps are super-confident and have absolute belief in themselves I always admire, because I can't really be like that. Because you never know what's right: what you feel inside versus what is portrayed.
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We had a lot of difficulty in getting the French to accept the pyramid. They thought we were trying to import a piece of Egypt until I pointed out that their obelisk was also from Egypt and the Place des Pyramides is around the corner. Then they accepted it. The pyramid at the Louvre, though, is just the tip.
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Many of the problems of poverty and need are really problems of physical infrastructure: not enough hospitals, too few schools, insufficient roads, bridges, and a lack of tools. This is what makes traditional philanthropy so daunting. You could build a thousand new hospitals in some parts of the world and barely make a difference.
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Girls can wear jeans, cut their hair short, wear shirts and boots, 'cause it's okay to be a boy, but for a boy to look like a girl is degrading.
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If you keep having to dip into the story's past to explain the present, then there's a good chance your real story's in the past, and you're just using the present as a vehicle to deliver us there.
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As far as 'Jane Pittman,' I don't know that I could verbalize, to this day, what I felt once I got into that role. I did a tremendous amount of research. I need to feel as though I am in the person's skin.
