“It’s like climbing a staircase. I’m on the top of the staircase, I look behind me and I see the steps. That’s where I was.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“All those vitamins aren’t to keep death at bay, they’re to keep deterioration at bay.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“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?”
― Jeanne Moreau
“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.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“The cliche is that life is a mountain. You go up, reach the top and then go down.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“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?”
― Jeanne Moreau
“I don’t like going where I’ve already been. Life is a myriad of territories to discover. I don’t want to waste time with what I already know.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“Life is an accomplishment and each moment has a meaning and you must use it.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“To go out with the setting sun on an empty beach is to truly embrace your solitude.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“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.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“People’s opinions don’t interfere with me.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“Although for some people cinema means something superficial and glamorous, it is something else. I think it is the mirror of the world.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“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.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“Death is an absolute mystery. We are all vulnerable to it, it’s what makes life interesting and suspenseful.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“You should not separate your life from what you do.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“If you want to live your life through to the end, you have to live dangerously.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“Beyond the beauty, the sex, the titillation, the surface, there is a human being. And that has to emerge.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“It’s just as idiotic to say there is no life after death as it is to say there is one.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“My aim in life is not to judge.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“I am a woman with absolutely no sense of nostalgia.”
― 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.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“To give and receive love, you have to be in touch with pain, you have to be capable of provoking it and feeling it.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“All fiction becomes autobiographical when the author has true talent.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“As a matter of principle, I always come to a film like a blank slate, I don’t learn my lines in advance. With this approach, I feel clean.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“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.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“Being an actress is to be in tune with the fantasies of a man. What woman never dreamt of that?”
― Jeanne Moreau
“Characters who are on screen from start to finish are not necessarily the ones who have the greatest impact.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“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.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“I can be intimidating, but not within the confines of a film shoot.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“I can’t belong to groups. I’ve tried. I behave normally, but people don’t look at me normally.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“I don’t feel guilt. Whatever I wish to do, I do.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“I don’t like the idea of separating life and work. That notion seems dated and a bit alien to me.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“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.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“I need, absolutely, to be alone.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“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.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“I’m always amazed when young women who are having babies want their husbands to watch the babies come out. I would never allow anything like that.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“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.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“It’s dangerous to assert oneself.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“Knowing how to die is knowing how to live. What is death anyway? It’s the outcome of life.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“My face has changed with the years and has enough history in it to give audiences something to work with.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“One thing you have to give up is attaching importance to what people see in you.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“Some children I have met are very beautiful. Some children are imbeciles, vulgar, terrible.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“Some gods may cross your path, but why should gods be beautiful? They could also be frightening.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“Something pretty… that’s just the surface. People worry so much about aging, but you look younger if you don’t worry about it.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“Sometimes the directors were afraid of what they brought out of me.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“To give a character life in a short space of time, it helps if you arrive on screen with a past.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“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.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“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.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“When Tony was madly in love with me, his relationship with Vanessa Redgrave was ending.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“When you live under the power of terror and segregation, you can’t ever start a work of art.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“Success is like a liberation or the first phrase of a love story.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“Some people are addicts. If they don’t act, they don’t exist.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“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.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“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.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“Acting deals with very delicate emotions. It is not putting up a mask. Each time an actor acts he does not hide; he exposes himself.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“Making films is no longer a way of acting, it is a way of life.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“We have so many words for states of the mind, and so few for states of the body.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“My life is very exciting now.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“The life you had is nothing. It is the life you have that is important.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“Living is risking.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“Nostalgia is when you want things to stay the same. I know so many people staying in the same place.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“If you’re extremely, painfully frightened of age, it shows.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“I’ve never worried about age.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“To me age is a number, just a number. Who cares?”
― Jeanne Moreau
“Life doesn’t end at 30.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“Usually when a woman is 60, it’s over.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“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.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“I have no doubt who I am.”
― Jeanne Moreau
“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?”
― Jeanne Moreau
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