Hildegard Knef quotes:

Success and failure are greatly overrated. But failure gives you a whole lot more to talk about.

My stage fright gets worse at every performance. During the overture I hope for a theater fire, typhoon, revolution in the Pentagon.

Prosperity's disciples build careful bastions against age and change ...

The so-called film star's lot is an infantile and precarious one ...

If you have to make mistakes, make them good and big, don't be middling if you can help it.

... lapses of memory are only attractive when you've encouraged them, not when they take you unawares.

Am I incapable of living with the one sole guarantee, that I'm still here? Am I afraid of living because I fear death?

I believe that the only possible reason for our being here is to serve in some form or another but that the form is not always readily found or recognized. And I've noticed that those who refuse to serve often wind up as slaves.

If one sits down and concentrates on imagining the worst possible surroundings for rehearsing a musical show, it's never as bad as the rehearsal rooms one actually lands in.

Try not to have idols: they are interchangeable and lead to a wantonness that is easily mistaken for love.