My Life So Far Quotes

“In psychologist Marion Woodman’s Leaving My Father’s House I read: “When humans suffer they are vulnerable. Within this vulnerability lives the humility that allows flesh to soften into the sounds of the soul.” Maybe this was what was happening to me. I felt lighter, as if a space had been cleared around me allowing coincidences (God’s way of remaining anonymous) to manifest. Maybe these coincidences had been happening all along and I just hadn’t been open to them. Now it was as though I were being led to them.”
― Jane Fonda, My Life So Far

“Have you noticed how we are presented with the same lessons, over and over and over, before a tipping point is reached? The lessons we need to learn circle round us, closing in, until finally we are ready to take them in. Take them in. Those are the words that matter, because until I had embodied the lessons I was supposed to learn, absorbed them into the warp and woof of my being, they didn’t “take”; they remained a head trip and didn’t lead to changes in my behavior.”
― Jane Fonda, My Life So Far

“I think most of us have many personas inside us at the outset, but over time we lean to the one that is dominant and the others atrophy for lack of use. The difference with actors is that we are paid to become all the people inside us and to bring into us all the people we may have met along the way. Thus we remain instinctively aware of, unsettled by, curious about, empathetic toward, and eager to display all those potential beings we carry. Of all these, the empathy part is the most important and is, I believe, why actors—the good ones—tend to be open, progressive creatures: We are asked to get inside the skin of “other,” to feel with “other,” to understand “other.” Being able to see from this “other” point of view gives actors compassion.”
― Jane Fonda, My Life So Far

“You don’t need to,” he replied. “You’re already saved.” And he went on to tell me that the original Greek meaning of the word saved meant that a person was whole.”
― Jane Fonda, My Life So Far

“Perhaps you think that by intimacy I mean sex, so allow me to clarify. Sex can be intimate but isn’t necessarily so; sometimes it’s just the pleasurable stimulation of genitalia. By intimacy I mean an attunement between two people who, despite each other’s evident flaws, open their hearts fully to each other. This openness makes them vulnerable, so trust is key. So is self-love: It’s impossible to be truly intimate with someone if you don’t like yourself.”
― Jane Fonda, My Life So Far

“I spent most of my time floating on an inflatable raft in the pristine Mediterranean waters, my big belly curving toward the sun, reading (incongruously) The Autobiography of Malcolm X. It rocked me to my core. Malcolm’s story opened a window onto a reality I had ignored. But the greatest revelation the book brought me was the possibility of profound human transformation. I was spellbound by his journey from the doped-up, numbers-running, woman-beating, street-hustling, pimping Malcolm Little to a proud, clean, literate, Muslim Malcolm X who taught that all white people were the Devil incarnate—to his final, spiritual transformation in Mecca. There he met white people from all over the world who received him as a brother, and he realized that “white,” as he had been using the word, didn’t mean skin color as much as it meant attitudes and actions some whites held toward non-whites—but that not all whites were racist. At the time of his murder, he was anything but the hatemonger portrayed in the American press. Somehow, through the horrors that had been his life, he had become a spiritual leader. How had this been possible?”
― Jane Fonda, My Life So Far

“I am still baffled by those who feel that criticizing America is unpatriotic, a view increasingly being adopted in the United States since 9/11 as an excuse to render suspect what has always been an American right. An active, brave, outspoken (and heard) citizenry is essential to a healthy democracy.”
― Jane Fonda, My Life So Far

“Nothing can change until we acknowledge what is, as I have learned over time.”
― Jane Fonda, My Life So Far

“I needed to pay attention, to be ready to step through and descend into it, whatever it was. It felt archetypal. Something in me was being slain in the fires of pain so that some new thing could be born. I knew it and went with it, and in the alchemy of my pain, like flowers whose seeds open only in the presence of fire, tendrils of something new began to sprout. Pain for me was a Trojan horse, penetrating the protective walls I’d erected around my heart, bearing within it hints of a future I might never have awakened to had I tried to numb myself with busyness.”
― Jane Fonda, My Life So Far

“What many people failed to do then (and continue to fail to do today) is admit what happened, understand the context, and make sure those circumstances never happen again. The winter soldiers showed us that redemption is possible when truth is spoken. Nothing can change until we acknowledge what is—as I have learned over time.”
― Jane Fonda, My Life So Far

“I had it in my head. I thought I had it in my heart—in my body—but I didn’t; not really. I couldn’t. It was too scary, like stepping off a cliff without knowing if there was a trampoline below. It meant doing life differently.”
― Jane Fonda, My Life So Far

“Where identity is not fixed, performance becomes a floating anchor.” And could I perform! Making the unreal seem real, the sad seem happy, hoping that somewhere along the way it would all work out, that I would discover who I was. Meantime I had an anchor.”
― Jane Fonda, My Life So Far

“My impressions of Hank are of a man reaching but unreachable, gentle but capable of sudden wild and dangerous violence, sharply critical of others but equally self-critical, caged and fighting the bars but timid of the light, viciously opposed to external restraint, imposing an iron slavery on himself. His face is a picture of opposites in conflict.”
― Jane Fonda, My Life So Far

“This is the part of film acting that I was only too happy to leave behind, the part that became more agonizing as time went on. Yet you have to go through those terrifying times if you are ever to have the magic ones, the times when it all works—and to be truthful, those I have missed. There were perhaps only eight or nine of them out of forty-five films, but they were the times when I stepped into my light and my muse was with me, all my channels were open, the creative flow coursed through my body, and I became. Whether the scene was sad or funny, tragic or triumphant, never mattered. When it worked it was like being enveloped in love and light, as I danced the intricate dance between technique and emotion, fully inside the scene while simultaneously a separate part of me observed and enjoyed the unfolding. Ah, but just because it has happened once doesn’t mean it will again! Each time is starting new, raw; it’s a crapshoot—you just never know. Which is why this profession is so great for the heart—and so hard on the nerves. I always assumed that the more you did something the easier it would get, but in the case of my career I found the opposite to be true. Every year the work seemed to get harder and my fear more paralyzing. Once, on the set of Old Gringo, I watched Gregory Peck late in his career doing a long, very difficult scene over and over again all day long. I saw that he too was scared. I went up to him afterward and hugged him and told him how beautiful and transparent he had been. “But, Greg,” I asked, “why do we do this to ourselves? Especially you. You’ve had a long and incredible career. You could easily retire. Why are you still willing to be scared?” Greg sat for a moment, rubbing his chin. Then he said, “Well, Jane, maybe it’s like my friend Walter Matthau says. His biggest thrill in life is to be gambling and losing a bit more than he can afford and then have one chance to win it all back. That’s what you live for—that moment. The crapshoot. If it’s easy, what’s the point?”
― Jane Fonda, My Life So Far

“Do not leave the theatre satisfied Do not be reconciled. … You cannot live on our wax fruit Leave the theatre hungry For change —FROM EDWARD BOND, On Leaving the Theatre   I”
― Jane Fonda, My Life So Far

“documents out of RAND. As Ellsberg wrote in his 2002 book, Secrets, “What I had in my safe at RAND was seven thousand pages of documentary evidence of lying, by four presidents”
― Jane Fonda, My Life So Far

“...and my professional idol Vanessa Redgrave. There is a quality about Vanessa that makes me feel as if she resides in a nether-world of mystery that eludes the rest of us mortals. Her voice seems to come from some deep place that knows all suffering and all secrets. Watching her work is like seeing through layers of glass, each layer painted in mythic watercolor images, layer after layer, until it becomes dark—but even then you know you haven’t come to the bottom of it.”
― Jane Fonda, My Life So Far