Helen Hayes Quotes

47 Sourced Quotes

People who refuse to rest honorably on their laurels when they reach "retirement" age seem very admirable to me.

Helen Hayes
The worst constructed play is a Bach fugue when compared to life.

Helen Hayes
Actors work and slave — and it is the color of your hair that can determine your fate in the end.

Helen Hayes
Good actors sparking each other make for the wild fire that lights up the theater.

Helen Hayes
Reality was such a jungle — with no signposts, landmarks, or boundaries.

Helen Hayes
The good die young—but not always. The wicked prevail—but not consistently. I am confused by life, and I feel safe within the confines of the theatre.

Helen Hayes
Health care is news, partly because of costs and partly because of length of life, both of which exceed expectations.

Helen Hayes
Through the years I have found it wonderful to acquire, but it is also wonderful to divest. It's rather like exhaling.

Helen Hayes
Now that I have reached a goodly age — a grandmother's age, three things remain. Faith, love and memory.

Helen Hayes
The theatre demanded of its members stamina, good digestion, the ability to adjust, and a strong sense of humor. There was no discomfort an actor didn't learn to endure. To survive, we had to be horses and we were.

Helen Hayes
We in the theater are paradoxes. Our agonizing shyness is equalled only by the tremendous need for acceptance.

Helen Hayes
The agonies of alcoholism have been familiar to me since early childhood. Childhood is rather brief under those conditions.

Helen Hayes
Inefficiency seems to be running rampant in our world, and our only hope lies in the fact that the wicked so often share this lack of dedication to a job well done. Nature does have its way of compensating.

Helen Hayes
Relationships, casual or intimate, are frequently played out as they might be in theater, heightened, dramatized, staged with echoes of past dialogue and gestures that corrupt the spontaneity.

Helen Hayes
Acting in the theatre is the most direct and effective approach to emotion that has ever been devised, isn't it?

Helen Hayes
Much of the disapproval we think is directed against us is, in fact, self-inflicted.

Helen Hayes
What was the worst part of going to school? Being called on by the teacher. A sudden rush of blood to the brain when your name was called invariably erased all memory, like a computer when the power fails.

Helen Hayes