Shirley MacLaine quotes

Born
April 24, 1934, Richmond, Virginia, U.S.

Occupation
Actress, singer, dancer.

Shirley MacLaine is an American film, television and theater actress, singer, dancer.

I don’t feel competitive.
– Shirley MacLaine

I don’t like to socialise much.
– Shirley MacLaine

The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.
– Shirley MacLaine

Of course I’m schooled in the old school method: taking what I think the director wants, then reworking it through my own brain and heart.
– Shirley MacLaine

The best way to get husbands to do something is to suggest that perhaps they are too old to do it.
– Shirley MacLaine

Being old is such a treat!
– Shirley MacLaine

I think male actors get confused by their own vanity.
– Shirley MacLaine

Maybe I’m a dream artist, as they call it.
– Shirley MacLaine

I make my mistakes in public.
– Shirley MacLaine

We’ve had so many lifetimes of different cultures and different religions and different points of view and different wars and different loves and different children.
– Shirley MacLaine

I think of life itself now as a wonderful play that I’ve written for myself, and so my purpose is to have the utmost fun playing my part.
– Shirley MacLaine

Someday perhaps change will occur when times are ready for it instead of always when it is too late. Someday change will be accepted as life itself.
– Shirley MacLaine

The mob taught me how to play gin rummy.
– Shirley MacLaine

Women being pitted each other another in Hollywood is an old tactic, but it’s not real at all.
– Shirley MacLaine

It’s useless to hold a person to anything he says while he’s in love, drunk, or running for office.
– Shirley MacLaine

Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.
– Shirley MacLaine

I don’t need anyone to rectify my existence. The most profound relationship we will ever have is the one with ourselves.
– Shirley MacLaine

A person who knows how to laugh at himself will never ceased to be amused.
– Shirley MacLaine

You know, I think I had my first past life recall when I was 7.
– Shirley MacLaine

I don’t know why anybody would be in awe of me.
– Shirley MacLaine

I’m a peaceful person once work ethic is established.
– Shirley MacLaine

For me, the safest place is out on a limb.
– Shirley MacLaine

I’ve been through so much of my own self-search that I’m not as consumed with who I am as I used to be.
– Shirley MacLaine

I can’t give up my own identity.
– Shirley MacLaine

When times are bad, people like to lose themselves in the sheer glamour of another period: beautiful wardrobes, magnificent meals served in elegant settings.
– Shirley MacLaine

If anything interferes with my inner peace, I will walk away. Arguments with family members. All that stuff. None of it matters.
– Shirley MacLaine

Crystals amplify the consciousness.
– Shirley MacLaine

I don’t think you go out of style when you’re living in the present most of the time. And I think that is what I do.
– Shirley MacLaine

I’ve made so many movies playing a hooker that they don’t pay me in the regular way anymore. They leave it on the dresser.
– Shirley MacLaine

Women love working together. That’s my experience anyway.
– Shirley MacLaine

I look like a real bag lady when I go to Starbucks with my dog and get my chai.
– Shirley MacLaine

I don’t do like diva trips and stuff.
– Shirley MacLaine

Remember, I come from such an excessively overdone, red-carpet place called Hollywood. So I’m used to people blowing up their success in ways that are far above and beyond the truth.
– Shirley MacLaine

You know when you eat too many sweets and get diabetes? Paparazzi are the diabetes of materialistic culture.
– Shirley MacLaine

I think we plan everything, somehow, on another level.
– Shirley MacLaine

My mother was Canadian, so you never knew what she was thinking.
– Shirley MacLaine

If they would teach us from the time we’re little to meditate and get in touch with all that our souls know, we wouldn’t fight so much.
– Shirley MacLaine

I want women to be liberated and still be able to have a nice ass and shake it.
– Shirley MacLaine

The person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused.
– Shirley MacLaine

The soul is everlasting, and its learning experience is lifetime after lifetime.
– Shirley MacLaine

Sex is hardly ever just about sex.
– Shirley MacLaine

The comedy of class, played so straight, is a wonderful thing for an actor to sink their teeth into.
– Shirley MacLaine

I’d like to introduce someone who has just come into my life. I’ve admired him for 35 years. He’s someone who represents integrity, honesty, art, and on top of that stuff I’m actually sleeping with him.
– Shirley MacLaine

Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb. It’s where all the fruit is.
– Shirley MacLaine

Well, when you’re relaxed, your mind takes you to the whole reality. There’s no such thing as time when you’re really relaxed. That’s why meditation works.
– Shirley MacLaine

I don’t have an assistant. I make a lot of people around me my slaves, but no assistant.
– Shirley MacLaine

You have to be talentedly insecure in order to be a good actress. And then it’s the director’s job to make you more miserable and get a good take.
– Shirley MacLaine

Well, success does not mean doing well.
– Shirley MacLaine

I’m not interested in fame at all.
– Shirley MacLaine

I never would have given up my work to stay home.
– Shirley MacLaine