Sally Field > Quotes

“You have to give up the life you planned to find the life that's waiting for you”
― Sally Field

“It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else's eyes.”
― Sally Field

“All of them with wounds that wouldn’t heal because no one acknowledged they were bleeding, and yet each of them needing the other to be near. And that—I realize—is how this story fits into my life. These generations of women, weaving a pattern into a lifelong garment, unconsciously handed down from mother to daughter to granddaughter to me.”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“Carl Jung wrote, “Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“How can you change who you are and learn what it takes to get up, over and over, if you can’t allow yourself to feel how much it hurts to be knocked down?”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“Why it moves so fast now when it used to move so painfully slow. It has to do with the percentage of your life that each day represents. When you’ve lived 25,915 days, one twenty-four-hour span is a very small part of the whole picture. But when you’ve only got 10,220 days under your belt, each day is a bigger portion of that existence.”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves. —Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“What I do know is this: How you care for your child from the time they are born until they’re eighteen is important, but who you are as a person and parent for as long as you live also counts, and counts one hell of a lot.”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“You were magical.” I whispered back, “I was?” Then everything was dark again and I could barely see her at all. “What does that mean?” I asked. “Just that.” Another flash of headlights lit up the front seat and I could see her mouth edging toward a smile, the light bleaching her beautiful face white, then slowly fading to black.”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“As I look back right now, I realize that it was all of those mindless, repetitive tasks I was forced to endure day after day, the getting up and doing every scene the best I could, over and over, that gave me a kind of “miles in the saddle.” They strengthened muscles not located in my body but in my heart—muscles not easy to access and certainly not fun. But easy is overrated and fun is extremely relative.”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“I drove back in the pouring rain, blurry and dazed buy knowing I had a father who cared enough to make sure my stools were soft. What the hell, it was better than nothing.”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“Furious for every moment in my life that I’d felt dismissed,”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“Do you need the ones you love to let you go before you can leave?”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“All of them with wounds that wouldn’t heal because no one acknowledged they were bleeding, and yet each of them needing the other to be near.”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“I had found someone to love, to pour my heart into, someone I felt frightened of, and I was seeking to be loved the only way I knew how: by disappearing.”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“Oh my,” I looked up into the face of Cary Grant. All I could say was “Oh God.” Without missing a beat, he said, “Oh God is right,” then gestured toward my bulging midsection, adding, “Does he know about this, Sister?”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“A child instinctually knows that it cannot survive alone,” he told me a few days later, and I wanted to say, No shit. He continued, with a “be patient” look on his face, “But if their survival is dependent on someone who might be dangerous or deeply flawed, then the knowledge of that is too terrifying to accept, so the child creates a better scenario.”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“you can leave?”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“Most important, my mother was also given the chance to study acting with the brilliant Charles Laughton, eventually becoming a member of his acting company, the Charles Laughton Players, performing Chekhov and Shakespeare in a small theater on Beverly Boulevard, on the outskirts of Hollywood. Not only did she find herself onstage with Mr. Laughton, but she had the amazing good fortune to be directed by him as well. These moments stayed alive in her always.”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“The problem can’t be my mother’s fault because I can’t live without her, so it must be mine. My mother is already perfect, she has to be, and I am not. I can fix me. I can make myself better.”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“to be excellent at anything, it must cost you something.”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“Strasberg. But during the spring and throughout the summer Lee lived in L.A., and for those months it was the master himself who taught at this little neighborhood residence. The lights went down and the first scene was up. I wasn’t familiar with A Moon for the Misbegotten, but even if I’d known it well, I wouldn’t have completely understood what was happening because whatever the two actors were working on, being heard wasn’t one of them. It didn’t matter. Their focus made it worth holding my breath to catch whatever words I could, as if we, the audience, were eavesdropping on something personal happening between these two people, something that they would hide if our presence were known. After the scene, the actors gathered their things and adjusted their clothes, never looking out at the watchers, talking only to each other, as if allowing themselves the few moments it takes to leave the privacy of concentration. Tucking their emotions out of sight, just as they tucked in their shirts and tied their shoes. Eventually they sat on the edge of the stage with varying degrees of awkward composure until the moderator (I’m sorry to say I don’t remember who it was that night) asked them what they’d been working on. After the actors explained their tasks, the moderator gave comments and finally asked for comments from the audience—all actors and members or, like me, invited observers. When the short break ended, everyone took their seats again and quieted as a tall, striking woman, a character actor I vaguely recognized, moved to center stage, keeping her eyes down. She stood still for what seemed to be a long time, then began”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“When lift plus thrust is greater than load plus drag, anything can fly” was the piece of scientific information that Sister Bertrille would repeat at the drop of a hat, though hopefully not her own.”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“Burt”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“Because not only did Sister Bertrille fly, she also sang, something that didn’t come naturally to me—not that flying did.”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“How you care for your child from the time they are born until they’re eighteen is important, but who you are as a person and parent for as long as you live also counts, and counts one hell of a lot.”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“The only episode I can remember actually being about something was the one where Sister Bertrille had to deal with Irving, a lovesick pelican, explaining gently that while she was very fond of him, she was not ready to settle down yet.”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“and defensive and, most important, outraged. Furious for every moment in my life that I’d felt dismissed,”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“More than that was the bottom-line fact that I didn’t want to play a cutesy version of a Catholic nun, wearing nothing but beige with never a thought of sex or a flirt with madness, two things that seemed much more interesting.”
― Sally Field, In Pieces

“One night she told me how much she had adored her father, loved being near him and felt proud to be the apple of his eye. But when Joy had found her sitting on his lap one day, she'd been furious, wordlessly accusing the little girl of trying to steal his affections. She told me that Joy had always been angry with her because of how much Baa and her father loved each other. It was because of that, my mother continued, that she couldn't be friends with women. Women always wanted to compete with her, she said, and she refused to compete, she wouldn't compete anywhere, and to some extent, that had ruined her career.”
― Sally Field, In Pieces