Sandra Brown Quotes

I love the idea of metamorphosing and changing, the legalized insanity of acting.

I discovered that in a story I could safely dream any dream, hope any hope, go anywhere I pleased any time I pleased, fight any foe, win or lose, live or die. My stories created a safe experimental learning place.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

I like to be able to play a character and act out a lot of things which I can't or don't do in my normal everyday life.

I've loved the escapism of being another person, slipping into another character for a little while.

That's why I'm an actress - escaping into a world.

People often become actresses because of something they dislike about themselves: They pretend they are someone else.

Bad guys are complicated characters. It's always fun to play them. You get away with a lot more. You don't have a heroic code you have to live by.

I like to play the weirdos. I like to play the people that are hard to like. You get to say and do things that you would never say and do in real life.

I always think I could play a fantastic psychopath. I'd like to play a psycho. With a heart, you know. A caring lunatic.

Let's just say I haven't been keeping up the Gary Barlow persona; I've let loose.

I think that's what I love about writing, is the ability to try to, in a sense, take a vacation from yourself and try to enter the sensibility of another time, another character, another place.

I try not to push myself too hard, but I also need to perform and earn the results.

I was too ashamed and afraid to confide in friends, and wanted to convince others and myself that my marriage was a success. I lost myself in my writing. Finding ways for my characters to overcome their problems and make their relationships work helped plaster over the wound caused by my inability to make things right at home.

Not to get overly psychological about this, but it's probably why I became an actress in the first place: for that kind of freedom and refuge, as well as for the fact that I just love acting so much.

I got into acting for the chance to be many different people and many different characters. I love hiding in a role and doing the research. If there is an opportunity to change my body, I will change my body. I'll slip in and disguise myself in a role. That is a really big treat for me.

My favourite thing is to be somebody else, no longer be me.

I even feel guilty if I'm reading a novel, because I think I should be reading Homer again. I don't really know what free time is, because I don't have something to measure it against.

I do listen to myself sometimes and think, 'Is my moral compass so easily swayed by the characters I play, or is it me growing as a human being?'

Enjoying fiction requires a shift in selfhood. You give up your own identity and try on the identities of other people, adopting their perspectives so as to share their experiences. This allows us to enjoy fictional events that would shock and sadden us in real life.

Every kid I meet who's a reader has got something like that, their fantasy world. And science fiction is the best, especially for girls because it's the one place where you can do the forbidden.

I'm always happier and a better actor when I can really lose myself in a character and become somebody else.

The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.

The reason I wanted to be an actor is that I don't want to play me for the rest of my life and make money out of that.

I sometimes think how strange it is that I've got to do exactly what I want, and that is difficult to cope with. You have to remind yourself every few weeks: I'm making this film and this is exactly what I want to do. And suddenly you're happy again.