Kim Basinger quotes:

Parents can be very influential in designing those little creepy-crawlers that jump around in your mind for the rest of your life. It's the fear of not being good enough.

You lose your anonymity just like a helium balloon with a string. Therefore people are going to have their own opinion and they're going to write in whatever clever manner they desire

You lose your anonymity just like a helium balloon with a string. Therefore people are going to have their own opinion and they're going to write in whatever clever manner they desire.

In this business, you can be at the top of the world and at the bottom of the barrel, and you're grape juice. I've been at both ends. It can make you become what you really are.

I grew up on soul music. I was a dancing little creep.

If you could see or feel the suffering you wouldn't think twice. Give back life. Don't eat meat.

I've been so blessed because I've had such longevity. I'm not a big red carpet girl. But I love the work. In this business, you can be at the top of the world and at the bottom of the barrel, and you're grape juice. I've been at both ends. It can make you become what you really are.

I feel there are two people inside me - me and my intuition. If I go against her, she'll screw me every time, and if I follow her, we get along quite nicely.

I think any girl who comes to Hollywood with sex symbol or bombshell hanging over her has a rough road.

I've played a mother many times, even in tragic things like, "I Dreamed of Africa," so I know how it is to lose [a child] cinematically. I have so much compassion on so many fronts, for women who have lost children or tried for years and couldn't have them.

I wouldn't trade anything no matter how good or bad or difficult. I'm the luckiest girl in the world as far as I'm concerned.

It can hit at any time [anxiety/panic attack]. You feel like you're in an open field, and there's a tornado coming at you. And you're just consumed by it.

I do things every day for my birthday. I'm just not a party girl.

It always takes the truth a little bit longer to cross the finish line.

I love to be nervous before a scene.

I don't live by a lot of society's rules; I can't pattern myself after the herd.

My priorities had been changing before I had Addie but after she was born they changed completely. I don't count - my daughter sort of owns me.

I've just always believed you can get anything you want in this life - anything you want.

With every project I've ever done, I've always treated it like I'm still in school. Each time you try to go a little further, get a little deeper, feel a little more, sculpt it a little better.

I'm very thankful that I've had such longevity and variety.

I'm extremely competitive with myself. But I'm not actively competitive with other women in the business. Which may have been a mistake. I've never had someone in my life, agent or otherwise, fighting for me.

I'm a very determined person.

My dad had even hired an accompanist to play for me on a piano. But he had never pushed me to music because I don't think he wanted me to be hurt as much as he was if it didn't work.

There's no doubt that becoming a mother was the greatest thing I'll ever do

I work in a strange business, and 'trust' is a word that's not even in the vocabulary.

I just absolutely, totally hated school. It was like a prison to me. I just could not stand that structured, absolute disciplined way of having to deal with life.

The older I've gotten, I really do feel that it's a lack of trust that I see in people and that's why they don't follow their dreams - because they don't trust anything.

I just want to thank everybody I've ever met in my entire life.

I'm a very determined businesswoman... I've got lots of things to do, and I don't have time to be classified as difficult, and I don't have time.

My hand still shakes when I sign autographs. I still go and sit in the movies like everyone else and look up there and go 'God! Movie stars! Wow!' And I'm in this business. I walk out there just fascinated, and I always want to stay like that. I'm just a little kid going to these movies, and I don't ever want to change.

I'm not a real social person - I'm shy - and a lot of the business is just social.

I remember that Jack Lemmon, who is one of my favorite actors of all time, says that the day he stops being nervous is the day he should leave the business.

A lot of actresses like to repeat things over - and I don't once I've been there and done that. I like to see what the next thing is that comes along.

As a child, I was very shy. Painfully, excruciatingly shy. I hid a lot in my room. I was so terrified to read out loud in school that I had to have my mother ask my reading teacher not to call on me in class.

As far as I'm concerned, I don't eat meat.

Children need to grow up and make their own decisions - how they want to pierce their bodies or do whatever they need to.

Clarity keeps you from boredom.

I cannot really be responsible for other people's thought processes.

I can't be enticed by a big commercial film.

I didn't really like my birthday as a kid. My mother used to say, "Sometimes we'd have a birthday party and you would just wander off." But she said it was just my way in the world. It wasn't anything that I was truly interested in.

I don't have time to be classified as difficult, and I don't have time to care.

I have to make a living, and I have been in a few films I wish I hadn't been in, but I don't know where things will lead me next, and that's exciting.

I just feel passionately about the horses and I will until it's no longer a tradition in New York.

I just thank god that I didn't grow up with so much money or privilege because you had to create ways to make it happen.

I know that my in-box will be so full the day that I leave the planet. So you try to stay interested in life and bring some kind of comfort and pleasure to others on this planet as you're going through this journey.

I look at marriage and I think marriage is phenomenal. I think it's great. I don't hold anything against marriage.

I love to see somebody who wants to be the best they can be.

I never really saw my dad as entertained as when he was just completely blown away by somebody on the television screen or at the movies. I think that's the real reason that I went into acting.

I say when the truth wants to find you or wants to be found by you, it will come after you. You cannot stop that force.

I still eat sushi, though I'm trying my best to have my last sushi roll.

I think my mother had a lot of opportunity when she was a kid. She was a model, and she did a lot of things in her life, but she had no real ambition. I think my mother really did want a home and kids and all of that.

I was so shy at school that I hardly ever talked, so everybody thought I was kind of a hermit.

I went to the University of Georgia for a year before I left, and then I went to live with Eileen Ford in New York for the modeling agency. I thank god I could do that because all the other kids were getting jobs doing other things, and when I got to New York, I was very blessed. I didn't have to stop and be a waitress. I started making money at a very young age and was just very lucky.

If you look at this generation of selfies and selfies and selfies, it seems a little bit scary. I like to see a driven kid, somebody who wants to come from the ground up.

I'm a highly, highly, highly creative human being. I write music all the time. I write scripts constantly. I run my own production company. I'm also a very determined businesswoman. I've a town to deal with. I've got a lot of things to do and I don't have time to be classified as difficult, and I don't have time to care.

I'm all for anybody having a party who wants that. The funny thing about me and birthdays or any kind of celebration where it brings attention to you in that way is that it's never been anything that I've thoroughly enjoyed - even as a little kid.

I'm my own worst enemy sometimes when I pick projects.

I'm not a real social person - I'm shy - and a lot of the business is just social

I'm not too in love with the word ambition, but I was driven.

I'm very sensitive to energy and people and life and animals and a lot of things.

I've done so many dramas in my life, and people don't even know I came from comedy.

My dad studied at the American Conservatory in Chicago, so he lived on all those streets. He said the war probably saved his life because he'd have ended up a dead musician, with all the crazy stuff they did on Rush Street back in the day.

My dad was a musician, and that was his first love, and I think probably, to be really honest, it was my first love as well.

My dad worked very hard for the money he made, and my mom worked very hard to keep this household up and running and all the kids fed and everything. And she did it in a brilliant fashion. They both did. In fact, the work ethic, to me, is so important in this life.

Once you become a mother, your heart is no longer yours...My daughter is the greatest thing I'll ever do in my life.

One realizes how we take water for granted and how important it is to have it in order to stay alive. Beyond the drinking of it, let's not forget the hygiene.

Some movies - even movies you've done way before - they're just clearer in nature.

Taking baths in Africa was a real challenge at times. I got real dirty, and sometimes I stayed like that for 2 days. That was pretty hard going.

That was the first time I knew I loved him.

The media paint ugly pictures about you.

There are movies that I did and I know what I did and I know the story, and I don't want to see that.

There are so many things in this life that I want to do and I can't do them all.

There's a certain amount of empathy you need to have, and I've also never been one to call it in. I know some roles are easier for certain people, especially when there's the sequel and a third and a fourth one.

Watching myself still makes me uneasy - and when you're younger, you're even more unforgiving.

We need to listen more, to hear the silence and live in it.

When I'm old I'm never going to say,I didn't do this or, I regret that. I'm going to say,I don't regret a damn thing. I came, I went, and I did it all.

When it comes to exchanges with people, I think, the more genuine you can be, the more giving you can be, the more you will, in the end, feel fulfilled.

With some people, that love of music is just buried in them. It's so deep in them that they would play for free because they have to.

You don't always have to be doing something. The most of something that you can do sometimes is to be in the present doing nothing.

You have to trust the journey. That has become my motto for years: trust the journey. Because in the end, we're all kind of fearful. We all have fears and insecurities and ups and downs.

You learn something from everything you do. With every project I've ever done, I've always treated it like I'm still in school.

You never stop the measuring process because these are oceans that are so deep that they have no bottom, and it takes a long time to know that. It only goes to a higher place after you've gone to the depths where you think there's a bottom - and when you find out that there is no bottom, it just rises up into this plume of euphoria.

You'd think with all the magazines and the covers and all the sexy stuff I've done, that that's hugely a part of me. But even though I've played those roles and I've dressed up and been on the covers of these things and done this and that, it is all such pretense. So I just thought, "I can't be one of those girls. I wear bib jeans. I don't wear underwear like that. I don't move in the world like that." You know, I'm more bare-footed Rastafarian, crazy.

I work in a strange business, and trust is a word that's not even in the vocabulary.

In American cinema, people will take a chance on you, though they'll often remind you that really, they always liked you.