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.

I am a woman with absolutely no sense of nostalgia.

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.

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.

Some people are addicts. If they don't act, they don't exist.

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

You should not separate your life from what you do.

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

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

Making films is no longer a way of acting, it is a way of life.

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

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

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

People's opinions don't interfere with me.

One thing you have to give up is attaching importance to what people see in you.

My face has changed with the years and has enough history in it to give audiences something to work with.

My aim in life is not to judge.

Knowing how to die is knowing how to live. What is death anyway? It's the outcome of life.

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

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.

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

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?

I have no doubt who I am.

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.

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.

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

Life doesn't end at 30.

It's just as idiotic to say there is no life after death as it is to say there is one.

I've never worried about age.

If you're extremely, painfully frightened of age, it shows.

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?

Living is risking.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Characters who are on screen from start to finish are not necessarily the ones who have the greatest impact.

My life is very exciting now.

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

Death is an absolute mystery. We are all vulnerable to it, it's what makes life interesting and suspenseful.

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

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

Some children I have met are very beautiful. Some children are imbeciles, vulgar, terrible.

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

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.

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?

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