Louise Brooks

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

“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.”

“Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.”

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

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

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

“I have been taking stock of my 50 years since I left Wichita in 1922 at the age of 15 to become a dancer with Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. How I have existed fills me with horror. For I have failed in everything -- spelling, arithmetic, riding, 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.”

“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...”

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