Ellen Burstyn quotes:

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  • What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be.

  • It's about avoiding reality through various escape routes that become addictions and lead to Hell. My character is addicted to television, chocolate, coffee, to her dream of her son, which has no basis in reality.

  • I did my famous cabbage soup diet, so I was able to do it.

  • It's been awhile. My Oscar is getting kind of tarnished. I looked at it a couple of years ago and thought I really needed a new one.

  • Regret is a toxin that I try not to allow in my body.

  • I always wanted to play Joan of Arc. I've always wanted to do that. Now I'm thinking, 'Maybe there's a story in Joan of Arc's mother!' If I don't hurry up, her grandmother!

  • I've lived most of my life in Manhattan, but as close as Brooklyn is to Manhattan, there are people who live there who have been to Manhattan maybe once or twice.

  • I think that the change began... I made a film a few years ago called The Spitfire Grill, and that didn't make much money either, but it was a good film and an independent film.

  • They pulled Resurrection out of the theatres, so it was running in New York and I was nominated for the Oscar and there was no ad in the newspapers to say it was running. So it was literally killed.

  • Their life is about getting enough money to put food on the table to feed their children, and that's it.

  • Nobody would want to leave that film to go get high.

  • Everything gets old if you do it often enough.

  • It's a sin to have your films not to make money.

  • Then in came this script with another very low offer, and another drug addict and a depressing and difficult part to play. I thought, 'Why should I put myself through that for hardly any money?'

  • Well my taste wasn't very good when I first started out. But later, when I began to appreciate the art of acting, I would say the actress I most admire is Vanessa Redgrave.

  • I couldn't kill a chicken, I couldn't kill a cow - I was a vegetarian too at that time - so I thought, well what is there that I could kill? I couldn't kill this and I couldn't kill that.

  • I do like to work with young directors because it's such a difficult business that I think after directors have been around a while sometimes, not always, but sometimes their passion gets siphoned off because they get hurt.

  • So I was at the Actor's Studio, thinking about this, and I happened to glance over to the other side of the stage and I saw the ugliest chair I have ever seen. And I thought, 'Well, I could kill that chair!'

  • When you recognize what your talents are, a happy life is developing them to the greatest extent you can.

  • She goes from one addiction to another. All are ways for her to not feel her feelings.

  • The interesting thing about doing a play is to find a way to make it fresh and do it as though you were doing it for the first time.

  • To me, it's a very moral film. If my son were a teenager now, I would drag him to see it.

  • Bob Duvall is a great actor because each time out, he creates a whole, complete character. You have the feeling that you're not seeing an actor at all, but a fully realized human being. Think of how he was in The Godfather. If you didn't know Bobby, you'd think that he really was Tom, the consigliere. Then you see him in Santini, and he's completely different. He's not only a personality, he's a consummate actor.

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