Best 140 quotes of Susan Sarandon on MyQuotes

9/11 just seemed to come out of the blue. And there were people asking questions, but then there were no answers. At some point, it just turned into, "We've got to do what we've got to do." And I think those are the moments when you grow, when you get the opportunity to try to figure out, exactly as you said, what price are you paying, and if it's worth that price.

Acting is kind of a forced compassion, where you learn that given certain circumstances, you can feel and do things that you never thought yourself capable of. And so it stops you from being super-judgmental.

Any time you step forward, someone gets upset.

As a mother trying to raise kids with some kind of a code, an honorable way to solve problems without using violence, I find it interesting to live in a country where your government is allowed to kill, whether it's war or execution. What interests me is not who deserves to die but who deserves to kill.

At a time when everything seems so out of control and the people you've elected are bogus and there's so much random violence and hatred, it fills you with such hope and admiration to even be part for a short time in a community where people have connected to strangers to try to put out a hand.

At the end of your life, you are going to want to know that you made some kind of difference.

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?

Being a Catholic, I was drawn to the mystery of the Latin and the smoke and the mirrors and all of that. That part of my disposition definitely did lend itself to finding my way to the back door of some artistic pursuit.

By the time I went to the Catholic University of America, which was the time the priests were all leaving with the nuns, the more I studied about the Bible and how it came about, the more I lost my faith.

Certainly, if more people were smoking instead of drinking, people don’t get mean on weed, don’t beat up their wives on weed, and don’t drive crazy on weed. They just get hungry, don’t go out of the house, or laugh a lot. I think it would make for a much more gentle world.

Children reinvent your world for you.

Do you really expect me to say gravity hasn't taken its toll? No. But as I'm earning these lines [in my face], I'm making an aesthetic choice.

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

Everything's serendipitous and there's no way of knowing who's going to get sick or who's going to get hit by a bus or who's going to fall in love and who's going to get pregnant. All the things that happen, it's up for grabs so it's kind of an exercise in surrender in a way.

He has a very strong vision of what he wants.

I always had a problem with original sin; I always had a problem with the exclusivity of the church and a lot of the things that the nuns taught me.

I always think that the difference between film and theater is like the difference between masturbation and making love. Because, in film, you just have to get one moment right; you're practically by yourself. And in theater, you actually have to have a relationship with the audience.

I am optimistic. I think that there are a lot of women producing things, not necessarily in the studios. Actresses are putting stuff together. I think there are more stories about women of color [and] older women. But it is slim pickings.

I believe in using words, not fists.

I'd have conversations with the camera crew about what was going on in the scene, so that they were prepared to shoot it. I love the fact that when you work, you create this tribe.

I did study drama at Catholic U, but the undergraduates weren't put in productions, really, except as extras, and it wasn't a hands-on kind of thing at all. I couldn't afford to go to another college. And my grandparents lived in D.C., so I was able to live with them, and that's how I was able to afford it at all.

I don't think there's a petty system of heaven and hell. The love of God is much more forgiving. I'm not a believer in a wrathful God at all.

I feel it's easier to sit in the backseat and go, "Oh, yeah, let's go there." You're not worried about getting to the destination. But the guy or the woman who has to get you to the destination is worried about a lot of other things, so my job as an actor is to try as many things as possible, be as open as possible, listen, and keep my heart open.

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.

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

If sexuality means saying yes to life, then you should be able to remain sexual until the day you die.

If Wes Anderson has a very strong cast, he can direct the minutia of that story and still manage to have something that lives and breathes.

If you can just see all the children of the world as your own, all the mothers of the world as you are, we can make a huge difference.

If you're upset with how you look at 25, life's going to be tough.

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.

I got married to Chris Sarandon, who was a graduate student, and he knew everything at that point, I thought, because he was older. He introduced me to poetry and black-and-white movies.

I had school debt I had to pay off. Sometimes I would do commercials to get me through. And so I kept bumping along like that and learning different things. I knew I wanted to get out on my own. I was just super-curious, and I was a good listener. And that got me through.

I hate the assumption that once you're committed to someone you stop treating each other like individuals. I like getting up knowing I am choosing to be with that person.

I hesitate to direct even though I feel I contribute a lot on a set.

I hope they're present in their lives and feel some kind of empathy. I think a lot of the mistakes that have been made in the world have been through a lack of empathy. If you can identify with someone else and empathise with someone else, then activism is a short step away, she explained in an interview with Parade.

I just love the fact that that's the way life is. When something horrible happens, you do find yourself laughing in weird places in the midst of grief and crying in the supermarket when you see a cereal that somebody used to eat. There's just no way of guarding yourself one way or another. Everybody grieves differently, and there's no right or wrong way.

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.

I'll always rather be in a ship that's got a captain that has some vision.

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

I'm always trying to have a good time on set because that's when things happen. That's when you're playful.

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

I married him [Chris Sarandon] my senior year, and after I graduated, he went to the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, and I tagged along and was doing some local modeling and commercials and things like that. A woman named Jane Oliver, who handled Sylvester Stallone, saw Chris at the theater and asked him to come in and audition. We went in and auditioned - he needed someone to read with him. I read with him, and she said, "Well, why don't both of you come back in the fall.

I'm kind of a nerd, so whenever I get a chance to talk to an artist I really admire, I tend to gravitate to process.

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

In terms of our foreign policy, that's where we made a mistake after 9/11. Everyone's going, "Why, why, why," and there wasn't any investigation or learning from any of what we had been doing up to that time that had set us up.

In the theater, you're so much more in charge as an actor. For better or for worse, you know what the audience is seeing. But you can be acting your socks off on film, and then you see the movie, and the camera is on the other actor, or they've cut out the lines you thought were significant, or they've adjusted the plot. So much of it is out of your control.

I remember Anthony Perkins saying, "Real is not necessarily interesting." So real is not enough. But what happens as an actor is that you're really trained to listen and to be open and have empathy. It's such a natural consequence that you end up being more political. You can empathize with the mother whose kids are going to be sent to Iraq, or you can emphasize with the mother who is losing their child to a disease. How could you not then be active? So you're automatically drawn to that aspect in the rest of your life.

It didn't seem to have relevance, except in Central America or South America, countries where the church was connected to the fight of the people for economic justice. That's why it was so interesting to find myself back with Sister Helen [in Dead Man Walking], this new breed of nuns who were making a difference in the community.

It gets to be 2 a.m., and they hand you a bottle of whipped cream and some syrup and things start getting silly.

It helps me chill out and focus.