Jeanne Moreau's Quotes

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

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

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

To give a character life in a short space of time, it helps if you arrive on screen with a past.

To give and receive love, you have to be in touch with pain, you have to be capable of provoking it and feeling it.

To me age is a number, just a number. Who cares?

Usually when a woman is 60, it's over.

We have so many words for states of the mind, and so few for states of the body.

When Tony was madly in love with me, his relationship with Vanessa Redgrave was ending.

When you live under the power of terror and segregation, you can't ever start a work of art.

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.

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.

I think more and more people want to live alone. You can be a couple without being in each other's pockets. I don't see why you have to share the same bathroom.

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.

I gradually work myself into a frenzy as the shoot approaches, while we're choosing the costumes or working with the make-up artist. I'm not so much interested in my character as the film itself.

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.

People's opinions don't interfere with me. Ageing gracefully is supposed to mean trying not to hide time passing and just looking a wreck. That's what they call ageing gracefully. You know?

What is amazing for a woman of my age is that I change as the world is changing-and changing very, very fast. I don't think my mother had that opportunity to change.

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 can't belong to groups. I've tried. I behave normally, but people don't look at me normally.

My aim in life is not to judge.

Aging gracefully is supposed to mean trying not to hide time passing and just looking a wreck. Don't worry girls, look like a wreck, that's the way it goes.

I don't feel guilt. Whatever I wish to do, I do.

My life is very exciting now. Nostalgia for what? It's like climbing a staircase. I'm on the top of the staircase, I look behind and see the steps. That's where I was. We're here right now. Tomorrow, we'll be someplace else. So why nostalgia?

Life is an accomplishment and each moment has a meaning and you must use it.

To go out with the setting sun on an empty beach is to truly embrace your solitude.

If you get trapped in the idea that what is most important is what image of yourself you're giving to the world, you're on a dangerous path.

Women will not talk about football unless one of them is in love with a football player, and then suddenly you discover that they know everything that is to be known about it.

I need, absolutely, to be alone.

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.

Every night I go over what I did in the day, in ethical or moral terms. Have I treated people properly? Did I tell the truth?

Something pretty... that's just the surface. People worry so much about aging, but you look younger if you don't worry about it.

All those vitamins aren't to keep death at bay, they're to keep deterioration at bay.

Nostalgia is when you want things to stay the same. I know so many people staying in the same place.

Success is like a liberation or the first phrase of a love story.

You should not separate your life from what you do.

Although for some people cinema means something superficial and glamorous, it is something else. I think it is the mirror of the world.

Beyond the beauty, the sex, the titillation, the surface, there is a human being. And that has to emerge.

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

Some gods may cross your path, but why should gods be beautiful? They could also be frightening.

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.

All fiction becomes autobiographical when the author has true talent.