Susan Sarandon quotes: astute advice from the actress.
“How you spend your energy is ultimately what creates who you are.”
“It’s important to just keep wanting whatever it is you want and fight for it, desperately.”
“You have to take away the idea that something you do is right or wrong. I don’t think there’s a right or a wrong; I think there’s an ‘it works’ or ‘it doesn’t work’ for the whole.”
“Make mistakes. Make big mistakes. Mistakes are how we find our voice.”
“I think looking at your own life… you can motivate anything, or you can delude yourself into anything.”
“I’ll always rather be in a ship that’s got a captain that has some vision.”
“When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.”
“I try to live my life every day in the present, and try not to turn a blind eye to injustice and need.”
“At the end of your life, you are going to want to know that you made some kind of difference.”
“It’s a very exciting time in the history of this country, to even see people responding to a different way of doing business and really wanting to make a change.”
“To know that once you decide to look at life outside of the narrow limits of just your world and start to understand that you can make a difference in very simple ways – in volunteering and all the way up to bigger world problems.”
“This is an amazing country, for all of its faults. My feeling is, dig in and let’s try to change the world. Dissent is not only your right, it’s your duty.”
“Everyone has a responsibility towards this larger family of man, but especially if you’re privileged, that increases your responsibility.”
“People will like you for the wrong reasons your entire life, even if you don’t have parents who are celebrities. They will like you because you have a car or you have money or your breasts are big.”
“I think I’m an actor because I have very strong imagination and empathy. I never studied acting, but those two qualities are exactly the qualities that make for an activist.”
“I had school debt I had to pay off. Sometimes I would do commercials to get me through. And so I kept bumping along like that and learning different things. I knew I wanted to get out on my own. I was just super-curious, and I was a good listener. And that got me through.”
“I remember going to great lengths to celebrate disappointments like not getting a job. I’d take whatever little cash I had and go out to dinner. I saw loss as an opportunity to change direction.”
“I hate to sound like the old hippie that I am, but I think that even the bad stuff can turn into good stuff. Every day is a miracle, right?”
“Everything that has ever happened to me that has been important has not been something that I’ve hoped for, or looked for, or manipulated – it’s all been predicated on my ability to take a new road when it presented itself and to go with it.”
“I think the only reason I remain an actor is that you can never quite get it right. So there is a challenge to it.”
“The only thing I can talk about is just forgiving yourself, because I do not have everything together.”
“I was a voracious reader and the library fed my curiosity, imagination and my soul. I read by the shelf – biographies, fantasy – all and everything fed my dreams. Then as an adult whenever I would go on location the first thing we would do as a family is sign up at the closest library. Not only would we find books, but what was happening in that town, because the library is the head of the community.”
“We need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet. I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things… all of it, all of the time, every day. You’re saying, ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness.'”
“Every relationship starts out with a dream of what you think it’s going to be, and you either have the tool kit when you get to the hard spots where you’ll make it through, or you need to move on.”
“One of the first lessons I learned as a mom was to forgive myself for not being perfect and to try to prioritize what was really important. I had to really accept very early on that after a while, reading a script and finding the form for the class trip, it was hard to realize which one had priority at times. So I just had to say, ‘You’re doing the best you can, and when you make a mistake, apologize. Your kids know that you love them.'”
“I just want my kids to love who they are, have happy lives and find something they want to do and make peace with that. Your job as a parent is to give your kids not only the instincts and talents to survive, but help them enjoy their lives.”
“I feel my family’s needs are a priority. I’m not comfortable with the idea of serving the many and ignoring my family.”
“Children reinvent your world for you.”
“The trouble with being an activist is you end up like Eve and you get kicked out of the Garden of Eden. You know, Eve was the first person who thought for herself. And she still gets a bad rap. I named my daughter after her.”
“So I would hope they would develop some kind of habit that involves understanding that their life is so full they can afford to give, in all kinds of ways, to other people. I consider that to be baseline spirituality.”
“If you’re upset with how you look at 25, life’s going to be tough.”
“Don’t smoke! It’s just so bad for your complexion. And I guess be as happy as possible. That really helps.”
“Happiness is the true beauty weapon.”
“I look forward to being older, when what you look like becomes less and less an issue and what you are is the point.”
