Joan Allen quote: "I think of myself more as a character actor than that ingenue leading lady, who started out something like Michelle Pfeiffer, or Jessica Lange. I'm a bit quirkier than that."

Once I got to high school and auditioned for a play and got in, I thought this was really what I was...
JOAN ALLEN

a lady who couldn't keep her legs together.
JOAN ALLEN

I certainly do get at the end of my rope at times. We all do.
JOAN ALLEN

I think that I do separate myself a fair amount. And I don't feel like I am representing women. That...
JOAN ALLEN

I don't have a political bone in my body.
JOAN ALLEN

It's such a great feeling to make people laugh. I know I've made people cry or want to slit their wr...
JOAN ALLEN

Acting gave me the opportunity to do outrageous things. It allowed me to be sad, happy, angry and lu...
JOAN ALLEN

I'm not a huge risk taker... I'm not going to jump out of an airplane and parachute and things like ...
JOAN ALLEN

Who's gonna do your hair, who's gonna do your make-up, the jewelry, the bag, what kind of stockings?
JOAN ALLEN

Almost any film that you do is an opportunity to open you up and make you more aware of an area that...
JOAN ALLEN

With something that's more emotionally based, you can't sort of screw the line up a little bit and a...
JOAN ALLEN

It's such a great feeling to make people laugh. I know I've made people cry or want to slit ...
JOAN ALLEN

I get recognised sometimes. But I just live my life. I get on the bus, I get on the subway, it's...
JOAN ALLEN

My mother loved entertaining, and I've followed suit, so we have big celebrations for New Year, ...
JOAN RIVERS

When you look at the world, the world isn't just one palette. It's a beautiful rainbow, and ...
JOAN SMALLS

A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it fro...
JOAN DIDION

I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.
JOAN MIRO

I succeeded by saying what everyone else is thinking.
JOAN RIVERS

Forty for you, sixty for me. And equal partners we will be.
JOAN RIVERS

Being Jewish has always been important to me. I now have 6M tattooed on the inside of my left arm. I...
JOAN RIVERS

I wish I had a twin, so I could know what I'd look like without plastic surgery.
JOAN RIVERS

I told my mother-in-law that my house was her house, and she said, 'Get the hell off my property...
JOAN RIVERS

I was smart enough to go through any door that opened.
JOAN RIVERS

I have no methods; all I do is accept people as they are.
JOAN RIVERS

Is Elizabeth Taylor fat? Her favorite food is seconds.
JOAN RIVERS

I'm always shocked when I get an invitation. People are always shocked when they see me at a par...
JOAN RIVERS

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is God's gift, that's why we call it the ...
JOAN RIVERS

I've had so much plastic surgery, when I die they will donate my body to Tupperware.
JOAN RIVERS

Life goes by fast. Enjoy it. Calm down. It's all funny. Next. Everyone gets so upset about the w...
JOAN RIVERS

I enjoy life when things are happening. I don't care if it's good things or bad things. That...
JOAN RIVERS

Fashion is part of our culture, and it's about more than just a pretty dress.
JOAN SMALLS

I was no longer, if I had ever been, afraid to die: I was now afraid not to die.
JOAN DIDION

Nothing I read about grief seemed to exactly express the craziness of it; which was the interesting ...
JOAN DIDION

I was not an attractive child. When I didn't use my Girl Scouts uniform as a uniform, I used it ...
JOAN RIVERS

I spend a lot of time with Buddhists. I'm not a Buddhist, but their relationship with death inte...
JOAN BAEZ

We used to wash our hair in buckets and survive on toasted sandwiches, chocolates and soup.
JOAN GREENWOOD

I left my family, and I left my brother and sister, and I went and lived my dream. I saw everybody, ...
JOAN JETT

When I came back to it, we amicably separated from Warner Bros. I just picked up where I left off, t...
JOAN JETT

Bulgaria is fascinating. Because it had been a Communist country until the mid-80s, so it had just r...
JOAN CUSACK

What's so hard about that first sentence is that you're stuck with it. Everything else is go...
JOAN DIDION

I'm a fiend for costume jewellery and have countless pairs of rhinestone or diamante earrings, w...
JOAN COLLINS

I love getting back to Wivenhoe. I get out of my wig, bustle and costume in three minutes flat at th...
JOAN HICKSON

Instead of getting hard ourselves and trying to compete, women should try to give their best qualiti...
JOAN BAEZ

What is the biggest public forum in the United States? We were told it's the Super Bowl. The ad ...
JOAN BLADES

Reality is the only word in the English language that should always be used in quotes.
JOAN LARSEN

The only thing that's been a worse flop than the organization of non-violence has been the organiz...
JOAN BAEZ

When I finish dressing before a night out and have put on all the accessories, I usually look at mys...
JOAN COLLINS

I used to go over to Gene Kelly's house and play volleyball, and Paul Newman and Marlon Brando w...
JOAN COLLINS

Influence: What you think you have until you try to use it.
JOAN WELSH

Thank God we're living in a country where the sky's the limit, the stores are open late and you can ...
JOAN RIVERS

Writers are always selling somebody out.
JOAN DIDION

Vital lives are about action. You can't feel warmth unless you create it, can't feel delight until y...
JOAN ERICKSON

Roache's statement after his acquittal was dignified but his supporters were angry. They demanded to...
JOAN SMITH

Jesus
JOAN DIDION

If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live wi...
JOAN POWERS

A man can sleep around, no questions asked, but if a woman makes nineteen or twenty mistakes she's a...
JOAN RIVERS

A heart filled with anger has no room for love.
JOAN LUNDEN

I remember walking across Sixty-second Street one twilight that first spring, or the second spring, ...
JOAN DIDION

Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never t...
JOAN CRAWFORD

Simple things bring infinite pleasure. Yet, it takes us a while to realize that. But once simple is ...
JOAN MARQUES

We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget.
JOAN DIDION

I've never yet met a man who could look after me. I don't need a husband. What I need is a wife.
JOAN COLLINS

When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not th...
JOAN DIDION

We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them att...
JOAN DIDION

If you're coasting, you're either losing momentum or else you're headed downhill.
JOAN WELSH

Because gratification of a desire leads to the temporary stilling of the mind and the experience of ...
JOAN BORYSENKO

The question is not whether we will die, but how we will live.
JOAN BORYSENKO

You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can decide how you're going to live no...
JOAN BAEZ

My routines come out of total unhappiness. My audiences are my group therapy.
JOAN RIVERS

There is not one female comic who was beautiful as a little girl.
JOAN RIVERS

Can we talk?
JOAN RIVERS

Nobody told me how hard and lonely change is.
JOAN GILBERTSON

A man's health can be judged by which he takes two at a time -- pills or stairs.
JOAN WELSH

To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have ev...
JOAN DIDION

The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soo...
JOAN DIDION

The Four Rules of Life:
1. Show Up 2. Pay Attention 3.Tell the Truth 4. Don't be upset at the res...
JOAN BORYSENKO

Some tension is necessary for the soul to grow, and we can put that tension to good use. We can look...
JOAN BORYSENKO

It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing ...
JOAN BAEZ

All serious daring starts from within.
JOAN BAEZ

Americans are uneasy with their possessions, guilty about power, all of which is difficult for Europ...
JOAN DIDION

A pool is, for many of us in the West, a symbol not of affluence but of order, of control over the u...
JOAN DIDION

The Universe knows itself and expands itself through me.
JOAN BORYSENKO

Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended a...
JOAN DIDION

We were that generation called silent, but we were silent neither, as some thought, because we share...
JOAN DIDION

To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is, a dissatisfaction with self, an impossible claim that ...
JOAN DIDION

According to my sister, the expert novelist Jackie Collins, most men stray. And sex doesn't mean any...
JOAN COLLINS

If I weren't reasonably placid, I don't think I could cope with this sort of life. To be a diva, you...
JOAN SUTHERLAND

Nonviolence is a flop. The only bigger flop is violence.
JOAN BAEZ

The only thing that's been a worse flop than the organization of non-violence has been the organizat...
JOAN BAEZ

Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power.
JOAN DIDION

I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes -- and six months later you have to start all...
JOAN RIVERS

There is in Hollywood, as in all cultures in which gambling is the central activity, a lowered sexua...
JOAN DIDION

Death affords those who are left an opportunity to reevaluate everything. And though we would give a...
JOAN BORDOW

Sometimes you wonder how you got on this mountain. But sometimes you wonder, How will I get off?
JOAN MANLEY

The easiest kind of relationship is with ten thousand people, the hardest is with one.
JOAN BAEZ

...the story of a man who saw three fellows laying bricks at a new building:
He approached the fi...
JOAN BORYSENKO

The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect sp...
JOAN DIDION

My best birth control now is just to leave the lights on.
JOAN RIVERS

Journalism has always existed in two different realities . . . the economic marketplace and [the] sp...
JOAN KONNER

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. W...
JOAN DIDION

Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life — is the source from whi...
JOAN DIDION

If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?
JOAN BAEZ

I don't excercise. If God had wanted me to bend over, he would have put diamonds on the floor.
JOAN RIVERS

I think nobody owns the land until their dead are in it.
JOAN DIDION

My obstetrician was so dumb that when I gave birth he forgot to cut the cord. For a year that kid f...
JOAN RIVERS

No woman has an abortion for fun.
JOAN SMITH

Holding on to anger, resentment and hurt only gives you tense muscles, a headache and a sore jaw fro...
JOAN LUNDEN

To achieve the impossible dream, try going to sleep.
JOAN KLEMPNER

Just by making a decision to stay out of politics, you are making the decision to allow others to sh...
JOAN KIRNER

Even though everybody's lives are different, in general we're all human beings, and we go th...
JOAN JETT

The 325-foot Seagram Tower is the most southerly and closest to the Canadian falls and also affords ...
JOAN LINGARD

I can't imagine being a single parent or a single parent that doesn't have a lot of money. T...
JOAN CUSACK

It has been said that on screen I personified the American woman.
JOAN CRAWFORD

I went on a book tour immediately after 9/11. I was due to leave the following Wednesday, so I just ...
JOAN DIDION

We aim to express the passion of our members in something actionable that we can all in fact do.
JOAN BLADES

All teenagers have this desire to somehow run away.
JOAN CHEN

Can they do both? That's a huge balance, I think, with kids- trying to find the right- it's ...
JOAN CUSACK

We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate...
JOAN DIDION

I don't excercise. If God had wanted me to bend over, he would have put diamonds on the floor.
JOAN RIVERS

Other people will call me a rebel, but I just feel like I'm living my life and doing what I want...
JOAN JETT

I think there's nothing better than laughing in life, so that's nice, to be thought of as so...
JOAN CUSACK

I'm Jewish. I don't work out. If God had wanted us to bend over, He would have put diamonds ...
JOAN RIVERS

I take parenting incredibly seriously. I want to be there for my kids and help them navigate the wor...
JOAN CUSACK

Life is strong and fragile. It's a paradox... It's both things, like quantum physics: It'...
JOAN JETT

My personal style is bipolar. Sometimes I feel like dressing in a boyish leather jacket; other times...
JOAN SMALLS

A positive attitude is something everyone can work on, and everyone can learn how to employ it.
JOAN LUNDEN

The problem with beauty is that it's like being born rich and getting poorer.
JOAN COLLINS

It kills me when people talk about California hedonism. Anybody who talks about California hedonism ...
JOAN DIDION

I had a friend who was a plastic surgeon, so he would do little things. I never had, like, a full th...
JOAN RIVERS

Age is just a number. It's totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wi...
JOAN COLLINS

For me the challenge isn't to be different but to be consistent.
JOAN JETT

We live in a time when science is validating what humans have known throughout the ages: that compas...
JOAN HALIFAX

Acting is my true love. I would like to have been a serious actor, and I plan to in the next life. I...
JOAN RIVERS

My guitar is not a thing. It is an extension of myself. It is who I am.
JOAN JETT

Thank God we're living in a country where the sky's the limit, the stores are open late and ...
JOAN RIVERS

The first time I see a jogger smiling, I'll consider it.
JOAN RIVERS

Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.
JOAN DIDION

Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
JOAN DIDION

My mother 'gave teas' the way other mothers breathed. Her own mother 'gave teas.' Al...
JOAN DIDION

Diets, like clothes, should be tailored to you.
JOAN RIVERS

Settings are obviously important - and as a writer, you have to respect what was real at the time of...
JOAN LINGARD

One of the main secrets to staying young is staying healthy. I've sometimes had to suppress a sm...
JOAN COLLINS

You got nothing to lose. You don't lose when you lose fake friends.
JOAN JETT

For me an object is something living. This cigarette or this box of matches contains a secret life m...
JOAN MIRO

I used to get into the government car and switch on Chopin or someone I liked to hear at the end of ...
JOAN KIRNER

The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in yo...
JOAN DIDION

I wasn't beautiful, so there were plenty of character roles. I never did any Shakespeare, I'...
JOAN HICKSON

You may not know it, but at the far end of despair, there is a white clearing where one is almost ha...
JOAN BAEZ

The works must be conceived with fire in the soul but executed with clinical coolness.
JOAN MIRO

When you're on tour you definitely don't want lots of arguments. It's very important tha...
JOAN ARMATRADING

When I first met Antonin Scalia, I was a small child with one brown ponytail atop my head. Which is ...
JOAN LARSEN

And you have a record company behind it, this is a key too, you need people to fight for your record...
JOAN JETT

Most families need both parents to work. Moms need to be able to work and earn fair pay and have the...
JOAN BLADES

You can take charge, kick ass, do whatever you have to do and it's okay. You can blow people up....
JOAN SEVERANCE

Innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself.
JOAN DIDION

My grandma always said that God made libraries so that people didn't have any excuse to be stupid.
JOAN BAUER

I think that in our society we should do everything to encourage child-bearing and family-making. An...
JOAN LUNDEN

We put together a one-sentence petition asking Congress to censure President Clinton and move on to ...
JOAN BLADES

What I will no longer accept is the mediocre life of a modest little gentleman.
JOAN MIRó

Reading should be a pleasure, not a chore.
JOAN RIVERS

Making judgments on films is in many ways so peculiarly vaporous an occupation that the only questio...
JOAN DIDION

I mean, even my dressing room at the studio has candles and cushions and cashmere rugs and things.
JOAN COLLINS

Every time an article is written about me or any of my contemporaries who's had the fortune and ...
JOAN COLLINS

So now 20 years later people want us to get together so they can take shots at all these old babes t...
JOAN JETT

I was never the 'babe,' so I knew I'd never get those big roles. I'd always be the b...
JOAN CUSACK

I feel the need of attaining the maximum of intensity with the minimum of means. It is this which ha...
JOAN MIRO

I'm grateful for every day I'm still alive. Everything is still working. I attribute it to e...
JOAN RIVERS

Compassion may be defined as the capacity to be attentive to the experience of others, to wish the b...
JOAN HALIFAX

Mum has always been a huge anti-war activist. She would go off to protest and get arrested. I have h...
JOAN CUSACK

I have the absolute utmost respect for soap opera actors now. They work harder than any actor I know...
JOAN COLLINS

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find ...
JOAN DIDION

My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, an...
JOAN DIDION

I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw that my bath toys were a toaster and a radio.
JOAN RIVERS

Comedy is a very rough beat. It's no holds barred, as it should be.
JOAN RIVERS

Classical, Romantic, and Baroque music, that's what I really like.
JOAN ARMATRADING

I think bare legs in winter are idiotic. Unless your naked pins are toned, tanned and veinless, it&#...
JOAN COLLINS

When I was in fact a child, six and seven and eight years old, I was utterly baffled by the enthusia...
JOAN DIDION

I adore my apartment in New York. It was a ballroom that I remade, so it's like a loft but done ...
JOAN RIVERS

My grandmother spoiled my father rotten, and he grew up expecting women to do whatever he wanted. Wh...
JOAN COLLINS

During the 'ballad' years for me, the politics was latent; I was just falling in love with t...
JOAN BAEZ

I think America has a bad rap right now... and hopefully Obama will change that.
JOAN CUSACK

Acting for me is not a bad habit like smoking that I must make an effort to quit. I love acting; I l...
JOAN CHEN

I consider you as old as you look and feel. And in that case I feel - I feel I'm about 39, like ...
JOAN COLLINS

I'm concentrating on staying healthy, having peace, being happy, remembering what is important, ...
JOAN JETT

Part of my act is meant to shake you up. It looks like I'm being funny, but I'm reminding yo...
JOAN RIVERS

I was voted the most beautiful girl in the world in 1958, and courted by every young, available man ...
JOAN COLLINS

I used to not be confident. My father certainly didn't add to my confidence. When I was 17 or 18...
JOAN COLLINS

I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes and six months later you have to start all ov...
JOAN RIVERS

I blame my mother for my poor sex life. All she told me was 'the man goes on top and the woman u...
JOAN RIVERS

Doing 20 minutes of stretching, light weights and floor exercises three times a week takes the same ...
JOAN COLLINS

I know who you are, and I am not impressed.
JOAN JETT

Maybe that is the purest and most radical kind of religion – simple attention. Present-moment awar...
JOAN TOLLIFSON

Holding on to anger, resentment and hurt only gives you tense muscles, a headache and a sore jaw f...
JOAN LUNDEN

I caused my husband's heart attack. In the middle of lovemaking I took the paper bag off my head. He...
JOAN RIVERS

Action is the antidote to despair.
JOAN BAEZ

Nobody knows what anticipation is anymore. Everything is so immediate.
JOAN JETT

I'm having fun opening up. Sort of struggling to get the audience into it. It's good. It mak...
JOAN JETT

With plastic surgery, the general anesthetic is like a black-velvety sleep, and that's what deat...
JOAN RIVERS

If you have an ounce of common sense and one good friend you don't need an analyst.
JOAN CRAWFORD

My husband wanted to be cremated. I told him I'd scatter his ashes at Neiman Marcus - that way, ...
JOAN RIVERS

I think of myself more as a character actor than that ingenue leading lady, who started out something like Michelle Pfeiffer, or Jessica Lange. I'm a bit quirkier than that.

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Joan Allen

I think of myself more as a character actor than that ingenue leading lady, who started out something like Michelle Pfeiffer, or Jessica Lange. I'm a bit quirkier than that.

Joan Allen

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