Kiss Me Like a Stranger Quotes

“Which one of us, anywhere in the world, doesn't yearn to be believed when the audience is watching?”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“If the physical thing you're doing is funny, you don't have to act funny while doing it...Just be real and it will be funnier”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“It's difficult to continue loving someone who shits on you.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“After a while you learn
the subtle difference between
holding a hand and chaining a soul and you learn that
love doesn’t mean leaning
and company doesn’t always mean security. And you begin to learn
that kisses aren’t contracts
and presents aren’t promises and you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes ahead
with the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child and you learn
to build all your roads on today
because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans
and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight. After a while you learn that even sunshine burns
if you get too much. So you plant your own garden
and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers. And you learn that you really can endure,
that you really are strong
and you really do have worth. and you learn
and you learn
with every good-bye you learn.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“I think to be believed—onstage or on-screen—is the one hope that all actors share. Which one of us, anywhere in the world, doesn’t yearn to be believed when the audience is watching?”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“When I was eight years old, my mother had her first heart attack. After my father brought her home from the hospital, her fat heart specialist came to see how she was doing. He visited with her for about ten minutes, and then, on his way out of the house, he grabbed my right arm, leaned his sweaty face against my cheek, and whispered in my ear, “Don’t ever argue with your mother—you might kill her.” I didn’t know what to make of that, except that I could kill my mother if I got angry with her. The other thing he said was: “Try to make her laugh.” So I tried. It was the first time I ever consciously tried to make someone laugh.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“When we got back to my room, Gilda gave the dog a bowl of water and set some newspaper down in the bathroom for her to pee on. After that was taken care of, I ordered the cheesecake and coffee that Gilda said she has a yen for, and then we continues talking. Sparkle didn’t make a sound — no barking or winning or heaving breathing — she just sat on the floor and looked at the two of us. It must have been strange for her. She was a year old and had been taken from a farm by a stranger, put on an airplane, driven in a limousine, and then hugged and kissed by another stranger. Even when the doorbell rang, she didn’t bark. I thought perhaps she wasn’t able to bark. The waiter brought in the cheesecake and  poured out some coffee for us. When Gilda and I started eating the cheesecake, we heard a little peep form Sparkle. She sounded more like a bird than a dog — a very polite bird — but it was obvious that she wanted her share of cheesecake, which Gilda gave her. So the three of us polished off the cheesecake — “One piece, three forks, please.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“I found out that Willy Wonka had failed at the box office. It seems strange now to think that Roald Dahl’s morality story wasn’t embraced. I was told that many mothers thought the lessons in the movie were too cruel for children to understand. As the years since have proven, children don’t have any trouble understanding the movie—they crave to know what the boundaries are. It was the mothers who had a little difficulty.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“Making Young Frankenstein was the happiest I’d ever been on a film.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“I’m not a disciplinarian. I understand the need for discipline, of course, but I’m just not good at it. I’m not talking about hitting—I don’t think any parent should ever hit a child—but about setting the rules and sticking by them. How to punish without taking away love—that’s the great art. I wished that I could do it, but I was trapped by the most ironic dichotomy: I was afraid that if I set rules and drew lines and enforced discipline, Katie would take her love away from me.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“I covered all topics—everything and everyone whom I could possibly have wronged, including God, of course—and I asked for forgiveness. But in another part of my brain, I was screaming, “FORGIVENESS FOR WHAT?” I had no idea, but the strength of that absurdity couldn’t pierce the armor of my compulsion. When I finished praying, I got up and walked home. My mother, my father, and my pregnant sister, Corinne, were all waiting in the living room, dressed in their robes. From the expression on their faces, I thought that someone had died. My mother started crying. My father spoke first: “We called the police—they just left here. Do you know what time it is? It’s three o’clock in the morning! Where were you? What in God’s name were you doing?” I couldn’t bring myself to say, “I was praying, Daddy—I was lying in a field, praying to God to forgive me.” And if he had said, “Forgive you for WHAT?” I would have said, “I don’t know!” and he would have say, “For eight hours? Are you nuts?” . . . and he would have been right.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“When David heard that I needed a stage name, he started with A and worked his way through the alphabet, ripping off names faster than I thought anyone could think and speak at the same time. When he got to W and said, “Wilder,” the bell went off . . . Thornton Wilder . . . Our Town. I wanted to be “Wilder.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“In all the time we spent together, we had only one argument. I can’t even remember what it was about; I just remember that he yelled at me. Ten minutes after he left, he called me on the phone from his house: “WHO WAS THAT MADMAN YOU HAD IN YOUR HOUSE? I COULD HEAR THE YELLING ALL THE WAY OVER HERE. YOU SHOULD NEVER LET CRAZY PEOPLE INTO YOUR HOUSE—DON’T YOU KNOW THAT? THEY COULD BE DANGEROUS.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“Still no word from Mel.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“if the thing you’re doing is really funny, you don’t need to “act funny” while doing it.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“Across three thousand miles of sea and through strange England’s smiling, and into a wee Scots Highland town there is a lad who’s crying. Oh fool the world, he could, he could, a man at twenty years . . . but all alone in that Highland town there is a boy in tears.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“There is one strange irony that I haven’t told you. One April afternoon, three weeks before she died, Gilda walked up to me in our living room and said, “I have a title for you, ‘Kiss Me Like a Stranger’ . . . maybe you can use it some day.” I had no idea why she said it or what the title meant; I just thanked her.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“What I didn’t know was that I don’t need to act. I might want to act—just for the love of acting—but not because I need to earn the right to feel loved by God. I’ve got something much better. . . . I feel loved by the person I love.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“After ten months of no diagnoses or incorrect diagnoses—with her tummy distended as if she were hiding a small balloon under her dress—she finally heard it: “You have stage four ovarian cancer.” Gilda grabbed my face in her hands and sobbed, “No more bad news, no more bad news. I don’t want any more bad news.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“The pictures in the magazines almost put me off my job completely. I’ve always hated those color photographs of naked women in those stupid positions that are supposed to turn men on. I never felt that there was anything sexy about them.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“Gilda, if your marriage is so bad why don’t you get out of it?” “I’m afraid to be alone.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“Gilda, you’re talking like this is a fairy tale, and you’re going to meet Prince Charming, and everything’s going to be all right, and we’ll both live happily ever after.” “So what’s wrong with that?”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“If Columbia Pictures had not succumbed to Richard’s demands, and if I were a cocky, son-of-a-bitch movie star, and if Sidney Poitier had not held in his rage, there would have been no Stir Crazy. For the sake of my psychological health, I should have let out my anger at the time that I was angry. From the point of view of getting the picture made—I’m glad I didn’t. The picture was a great success.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“We went to Arizona to film the interiors of Stir Crazy in an actual prison. From Tucson, where we all stayed, it was an hour-and-a-half drive to the Arizona State Penitentiary. Sidney used real prisoners as extras. They had all been cleared by the prison authorities to work with us, and each prisoner was paid for every day he worked.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“How could she not be frightened? I was frightened too. I put my arms around her and hugged her for the longest time. “Don’t worry, don’t worry—you’re not alone. We’ll figure it out, don’t worry.” “I don’t know how it happened. My gynecologist said that it only happens with this new IUD maybe once every 100,000 times.” “Well, that’s a consolation.” She laughed. I pulled down the cover and fluffed up the pillows. Then we both got into bed, and I held her. “I don’t want to make trouble for you,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” “Please don’t say that. You have nothing to be sorry for.” “You’re not angry, dear?” “Of course not. Please don’t talk like that again. We’ll figure out what’s best. Don’t worry now.” And I held her until we both fell asleep.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“After I had my drink with them and said good night to James Baldwin and was kissed by Simone Signoret on both cheeks, I went outside, walked close to my car, and threw up on the street. It wasn’t about the food. I may act brave and sometimes outrageous—on screen—but in real life I get terribly nervous when I meet the great talents whom I’ve admired for years from afar.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“If the physical thing you’re doing is funny, you don’t have to act funny while doing it. . . . Just be real, and it will be funnier.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“When we saw the ascension scene—where I rise with the Creature on an elevated platform and cry, “LIFE, DO YOU HEAR ME? GIVE MY CREATION LIFE!,” my heart sank. I thought this was going to be one of the highlights of the film, and instead it was a boring blob. I put my head down. Mel didn’t vomit. Instead, he got up and started banging his head against the wall. He hit it three times, hard. Then turned his face to the rest of us and said, “Let’s not get excited! You have just witnessed a 14-minute disaster. In one week you’re going to see a 12-minute fairly rotten scene. In two weeks you’re going to see a 10-minute fairly good scene. And in three weeks, you are going to see an 8-minute masterpiece.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“MARGIE: You want to know if she’ll survive? She’ll survive! Living with someone who doesn’t want to be there would do more harm.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

“I’m always lonely when I’m on my own—a leftover I think from the Demon, who always struck when I was alone—but towards the end of filming I realized that I was going to be lonelier when I returned to my home and family.”
― Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art