Louise Brooks was smart. Once, when she was a mere 18 years old, she accompanied critic Herman J. Mankiewicz to the opening of a play on Broadway. Mankiewicz, who was associated with the writers of the Algonquin Round Table and would later gain fame as a screenwriter whose credits include Citizen Kane, had too much to drink and dozed off before the end of the play. Unable to write a review, Brooks stepped up and wrote the piece instead. The next day, Brooks’ review was published under Mankiewicz’s name in the New York Times! (Read all about it HERE.)
Brooks was not only smart, she was also observant, and the things she said and wrote could be witty, and wickedly true. Her book, Lulu in Hollywood, as well as her letters and unpublished notebooks, are full of quotable passages. Here is a small selection of some of the most memorable. BTW, the IMdB website has a page of quotes by Brooks, as does Goodreads, and so does the Documentary of a Lost Girl website. Check ’em out.
“I learned how to act by watching Martha Graham dance and I learned how to dance by watching Charles Chaplin act.”
“The great art of films does not consist of descriptive movement of face and body, but in the movements of thought and soul transmitted in a kind of intense isolation.”
“Every actor has a natural animosity toward every other actor, present or absent, living or dead.” ― Lulu in Hollywood
“There is no other occupation in the world that so closely resembled enslavement as the career of a film star.”
“I have a gift for enraging people, but if I ever bore you it will be with a knife.”
“And so I have remained, in relentless pursuit of truth and excellence, an unforgiving executioner of the bogus, an abomination to all but those few people who have overcome their aversion to truth in order to free whatever is good in them.”
“In writing the history of a life I believe absolutely that the reader cannot understand the character and deeds of the subject unless he is given a basic understanding of that person’s sexual loves and hates and conflicts. It is the only way the reader can make sense out of innumerable apparently senseless actions.” ― Lulu in Hollywood
“He understood my passion for books, which has made me perhaps the best-read idiot in the world.” ― Lulu in Hollywood
“And now I understand/admit that this passion is my true life, this passion for learning from the greatest minds to which I have remained faithful in every vagrant period.” ― letter to Lotte Eisner
“Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.”
“For two extraordinary years I have been working on it – learning to write – but mostly learning how to tell the truth. At first it is quite impossible. You make yourself better than anybody, then worse than anybody, and when you finally come to see you are ‘like’ everybody – that is the bitterest blow of all to the ego. But in the end it is only the truth, no matter how ugly or shameful, that is right, that fits together, that makes real people, and strangely enough – beauty.”
“Anyone who has achieved excellence in any form knows that it comes as a result of ceaseless concentration.”
“I have been reading Proust all my life, and I’m still reading him.” — New York Times
“True art instincts lead one up the right alley.” ― Billboard
“I never gave away anything without wishing I had kept it; nor kept anything without wishing I had given it away.”
“In my dreams I am not crippled. In my dreams, I dance.”
“Over the years I suffered poverty and rejection and came to believe that my mother had formed me for a freedom that was unattainable, a delusion. Then … I was … confined to this small apartment in this alien city of Rochester…. Looking about, I saw millions of old people in my situation, wailing like lost puppies because they were alone and had no one to talk to. But they had become enslaved by habits which bound their lives to warm bodies that talked. I was free! Although my mother had ceased to be a warm body in 1944, she had not forsaken me. She comforts me with every book I read. Once again I am five, leaning on her shoulder, learning the words as she reads aloud ‘Alice in Wonderland’.” ― Lulu in Hollywood
“I have been taking stock of my 50 years since I left Wichita in 1922 at the age of 15 to become a dancer with Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. How I have existed fills me with horror. For I have failed in everything — spelling, arithmetic, riding, tennis, golf; dancing, singing, acting; wife, mistress, whore, friend. Even cooking. And I do not excuse myself with the usual escape of ‘not trying.’ I tried with all my heart.” ― letter to her brother
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| “Remarkable Remarks,” Billboard, September 12, 1925. “True art instincts lead one up the right alley.” |
The Wicked Wit of Women a 2003 book |
“Books That Gave Me Pleasure,” New York Times, December 5, 1982 “I have been reading Proust all my life, and I’m still reading him.” |