In Pieces Quotes
"In those cracks of light, the pressure of what people thought of me or didn’t think of me, who they wanted me to be or didn’t want me to be, completely stopped."
"You were magical." - "I was?" Then everything was dark again and I could barely see her at all.
"I WAIT FOR my mother to haunt me as she promised she would; long to wake in the night with the familiar sight of her sitting at the end of my bed, to talk to her one more time, to feel that all the pieces have been put into place, the puzzle is solved, and I can rest."
"The agony was waiting for me in the school or I brought it in with me."
"I still have that book. All those books of hers I now own, hardcover Modern Library editions of Ibsen, Odets, and Chekhov, her barely faded notes jotted on the pages… the same copy she was using to memorize Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard in that envelope of a kitchen."
"I watched everyone picking their friends, forming clusters of companions, I felt the hill to friendship getting steeper."
"I guess you’d have to say that in my early school days—at five and six—I was a problem. A little stress case with a brand-new family and a constant stomachache that no one could explain."
"I never felt that she leaned on her looks in any way, though maybe she did before I knew her, before she was my mother."
"And maybe that’s what she’d been hoping for, to marry someone and to travel with him, to immediately move to Camp Barkeley in Texas."
"Joy’s history, handed to her by Mimmie, her mother, but somehow a thread of that history got woven into my mother’s history and then into mine."
"I wanted to be alone. But I was there. Constantly, endlessly, there."
"I watch my feet, careful little feet, my feet, not his, mine!"
"He loved me enough not to invade me. He never invaded me. In all the many times."
"I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be alone."
"I knew. I felt both a child, helpless, and not a child. Powerful."
"I am flypaper, the sweet sticky temptation, and he’s caught."
"I wanted to call Baa but couldn’t make my mouth move."
"We planted marigolds and raked leaves, Jocko beaming at me as if he needed my help."
"How can you change who you are and learn what it takes to get up, over and over, if you can’t allow yourself to feel how much it hurts to be knocked down?"
"Mind you, these were not fake, glued-on eyelashes, but the things that grew out of my lids, for God’s sake, the same as my mother’s and grandmother’s."
"When Gidget was canceled after that one blur of a season, I felt only one quick painful stab and then it was gone."
"I hadn’t had an agent when I was initially cast as Gidget, so Jocko introduced me to Herb Tobias, who seemed like a nice man."
"Once, Robert Mitchum, who rarely sat with the group either, made a sandwich for me, which unfortunately was smothered in yellow mustard."
"Then there was the day that Kirk Douglas read The Little Prince to me as we walked the twenty-minute journey back to base camp after wrap."
"All of that is well and good, but what makes this movie important had nothing to do with water balloons or mustard sandwiches."
"Somewhere in my stomach a feeling starts, like a moth bashing itself over and over against a hot light bulb, and if I get this feeling while reading a script it means: Walk away, this one’s not for you."
"I desperately wanted to believe that I’d find my way through this, that something was possible on the other side, that someday I’d be offered roles that I’d be proud to play."
"I remember feeling dark and depressed, dressed in my ragamuffin clothes as I sat on the floor of the theater arts section at the public library."
"I wanted to tell the actors what I thought, how at times I was confused and then completely transfixed, wanted to ask them why they chose to work on things that were so complicated to explain."
"I realize now that my mother at forty-six, and I at twenty-one, were separately feeling the same thing: alone."
"I was in Jimmy’s rented Hollywood house, about five miles from mine, sitting next to him on his piano stool while he played on and on."
"I felt like the child I once was, terrified in the night and afraid to call for help."
"I had always kept the thought of Steve tucked safely in my back pocket, like a return-trip ticket if I ever needed to go home."
"He met her at a Sigma Chi party, she was a wonderful person, and he was going to marry her."
"Marry me, Sally, or I’ll marry someone else."
"I didn’t want to get married. I needed away from his passions and emphatic opinions that would send mine into hiding."
"I’ve always loved ceremony and tradition (except birthday parties), but I never even considered planning some kind of wedding event."
"Steve and I got married on September 16, 1968, in Las Vegas. No one from my family was there."
"I began rolling from side to side, chanting loudly, putting myself into a hypnotic trance as if I were a Native American preparing to go into battle."
"I think there was always a part of me waiting for a reason to walk out the door, to be safely alone and hear nothing but my own heartbeat."
"Sometimes when I was caught in an argument with Steve, I’d be so overwhelmed with rage I couldn’t find any other parts of myself."
"Was I being asked to walk away from what I’d been working toward, so that Steve could find a career for himself?"
"I don’t look back on this time of my life with pride, don’t see it as a shining example of thoughtful parenting."
"It seemed as though we were trapped in our childhood, like Dorian Gray’s portrait. We got older but our relationship never changed."
"Everything from doing six weeks of summer stock in Ohio to studying musical theater with a man named David Craig."
"I was participating in a secret relationship that in many ways filled me with shame and rage."
"It’s not a tough day, just a lot of establishing shots. Then on Monday, we’ll shoot without an official director."
"When you’ve lived 25,915 days, one twenty-four-hour span is a very small part of the whole picture."
"I was standing on the edge of the crew with my hands in my pockets, looking like a passerby who’d just stopped to watch the film company."
"I felt powerful and important if I could please Bob—and yet I was being humiliated in the light of day by the same man who was happily devouring me behind closed doors at night."
"I was a grown-up version of the child wrapped in plastic dry-cleaning bags, performing while an older man, whose approval I needed, watched."
"Sometimes you have to do the best you can with what you’ve got."
"I’m telling you right now, this is mine and if you disagree, then, with all due respect, you’re wrong."
"Why would I lie? Why would I do that right now, knowing what’s happening in both our lives? Why would I do that?"