Jamie Lee Curtis Quotes

The system is only as good as the person programming it. If you don't have the follow-through, your system is useless. And by the way, it's that way in parenting; it's that way in marriages.

It's not that I'm retired; I just no longer accept acting work.

I don't think any woman wants to be known for being beautiful or busty. I think you want to be known for who you are.

I don't ever want to make taking pictures into another way of saying 'Here I am'. Because I'm as here as I want to be.

We are all born worthy. Worthy of love, worthy of success.

I've etched out who I am through myriad haircut attempts, outfit attempts, beauty attempts, diet attempts. It's been an evolution.

Children are paparazzi. They take your picture with their minds when you don't want them to see you at your worst. Trust me, they SEE and HEAR everything.

I think I felt that I was very well known for my figure and needed to keep that up for my work. And I regret all of it. I felt fraudulent and very shameful.

I want to be older. I actually think there's an incredible amount of self-knowledge that comes with getting older. I feel way better now than I did when I was 20. I'm stronger, I'm smarter in every way, I'm so much less crazy than I was then.

Being an actor, you are recognized for being somebody else, whereas these books are distilled from me.

I work with The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. I sit proudly as one of only two recovering addicts on their board.

So, take what's inside you and make big, bold choices. And for those who can't speak for themselves, use bold voices. And make friends and love well, bring art to this place. And make this world better for the whole human race.

We look at adoption as a very sacred exchange. It is not done lightly on either side. I would dedicate my life for this child.

All the work built my fame and certainly made me more money, but the toll it took in my home was not good.

Kids are going to try drugs and alcohol; that's part of society.

I'm never going to be an athlete, never going to be running triathlons - I'm not that person.

I have to be careful to get out before I become the grotesque caricature of a hatchet-faced woman with big knockers.

Life is not supposed to be this calcified experience where you don't change.

I believe that life is hard. That we all are going to walk through things that are hard and challenging, and yet advertising wants us to believe that it's all easy.

My husband and I are very different. Our company is called Syzygy Industries, which can mean a pair of opposites. And that's exactly what we are. Yet there is obviously a very strong pull toward each other.

By the way, food and rent aren't the only things around here that cost money. You sleep on the couch.

My deal was that they would use a full-length picture of me in my underwear and a full-length picture of me all done up, and they would write about how long it took and how much it cost, because that was the whole point. It was very liberating.

I never represented glam. That's the thing, you'll never see me in the front row of a fashion show. I'm uninterested in it. I find it trivial and banal and boring.

My mom said I was a handful. Now I'm helpful.

Recovery is an acceptance that your life is in shambles and you have to change it.

Being a parent is a weird juggling act - and nobody does it right. Everybody does it wrong.

Modern women are just bombarded. There's nothing but media telling us we're all supposed to be great cooks, have great style, be great in bed, be the best mothers, speak seven languages, and be able to understand derivatives. And we don't really have women we're modeling after, so we're all looking for how to do this.

Don't judge a book by its cover 'til you've read the book.

My husband once said he'd never met anybody who walked so fast and ran so slowly. As I said, it's a little hard for me to try new things, and this was me facing a fear that I'd had my whole life. Since I had no experience running, I felt like a failure before I'd even begun.

For years I stopped reading beauty magazines because I couldn't look at one without wanting to blow my brains out. How can those women look so good?

Pick clothes that you really love. And wear them. And don't make anything "special." If it's being held for something "special," wear it to the market. Wear it every day!

Hollywood is the backdrop of my family, and I know that the movie business is incredibly cruel as you get older.

If I'm honest I don't think the world would miss me if I never acted again.

And I was ashamed of myself for feeling like I had to do that in order to look a certain way. I felt misshapen, just not natural anymore. And I think it was a big stimulator of my drug use.

Because I know I'm an addict, and I know I'm an alcoholic.

It's not unlike the movies for human actors. Once a dog stars in a movie, they don't work very much anymore. It's kind of heartbreaking.

I think happiness comes from self-acceptance. We all try different things, and we find some comfortable sense of who we are. We look at our parents and learn and grow and move on. We change.

I'm a layperson. I barely got out of high school. I have no business telling people what to do or my big philosophy on life. I'm certainly not going to write any sort of memoir.

Fifty is a big corner to turn. It used to mean being put out to pasture, but it's the opposite with me. I feel more vibrant; I'm more active than I've ever been. The F-word really is freedom. It's the freedom to have dropped the rock-the rock of addiction, of family, of comparisons with other people. It's being fit and focused and kind of furious.

Exchange the words 'have to' with 'get to.' Exchange the word 'can't' with 'unwilling.

There is a point when you aren't as much mom and daughter as you are adults and friends.

I am appalled that the term we use to talk about aging is 'anti'. Aging is human evolution in its pure form. Death, taxes and aging ... We are ALL going to age and soften and mellow and transition.

The only two questions that need to be asked each day are: Did I live wisely? Did I love well?

If you just watch a teenager, you see a lot of uncertainty.

I don't have great thighs. I have very big breasts and a soft, fatty little tummy. And I've got back fat. People assume that I'm walking around in little spaghetti-strap dresses. It's insidious - Glam Jamie, the Perfect Jamie, the great figure, blah, blah, blah. And I don't want the unsuspecting 40-year-old women of the world to think that I've got it going on. It's such a fraud. And I'm the one perpetuating it.

The challenging part of parenting for me is to make sure that an individual person is an individual and not some sort of cookie-cutter version of me. At the same time, I want to make sure that I impart my sense of the world as an adult.

The more I like me, the less I want to pretend to be other people.

We sit at our consoles and play "Gears of War", but we don't see images from war. We don't turn on the news and see the evidence of war, the result of war. Maybe twice a year, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, we'll go out, we'll hang our flags, we'll try to inculcate in our children some sense of national honor for the fallen. But really, we don't see it. We just don't see the pictures. There's no drive-by on the freeway of death up close. So we don't really see bravery.

It was during a cosmetic procedure that I first had painkillers.

I actually think there's an incredible amount of self-knowledge that comes with getting older.

I have very short hair. It's the only cute haircut I think I've ever had.

The media nowadays has given the message to adults. Don't try new things, don't look foolish because we will catch you and then broadcast it to the world. I think children don't have that.

The dog actors and the relationship they have with their trainers is one of the most beautiful things I've ever watched happen in front of me.

People get real comfortable with their features. Nobody gets comfortable with their hair. Hair trauma. It's the universal thing.

The parameters are such that I don't get offered a lot of work. I'm sure most directors hear my list of don'ts and say forget it.

I've been going through photos of my mother, looking back on her life and trying to put it into context. Very few people age gracefully enough to be photographed through their aging.

The biggest lesson I've learned from my children is to look in the mirror at myself, not at them. I've realized that everything I've done has had an impact on them. We have to understand that they are like little paparazzi. They take our picture when we don't want them to and then they show it to us in their behavior.

You can't live a truthful life without regret.

My mother and stepfather were married 43 years, so I have watched a long marriage. I feel like I had a very good role model for that. And, you know, it's just a number.

I do as much charity work as I can and that my family life will allow. I do believe charity begins at home and the more we focus on our families, the better they will be.

I'm not sure what fame is for if it isn't to focus on charitable work.quot;

I have a rule: Pretend you're going on a trip for two weeks, and pull what you'd wear on that two-week trip, and get rid of everything else.

My favorite time of the holidays is when the children have torn open their loot and delivered their verdicts and are looking to you for something else ... memories that have nothing to do with things bought.

There is nothing you will regret more in your life - nothing - than not being present for your children

I barely got out of high school, and I look back at my life often and go, 'Wow, this was awesome!'

I was doing a children's book on self-esteem, and I really felt like I wanted to shed the shame I'd been feeling - and maybe make it easier for women my age who had probably felt bad about themselves.

I'm a human being who lives a flawed, contradictory life. And I have all sorts of problems and all sorts of successes.

Well, I could do it for a day, but I wouldn't want to be a teenager again. I really wouldn't.

I've had a little plastic surgery. I've had a little lipo. I've had a little Botox. And you know what? None of it works. None of it.

I'm a tidy, neat person. But I'm not a maniac.

I think my capacity to change has given me tremendous happiness, because who I am today I am completely content to be.

[Comedian Jerry Seinfeld was nominated for a Grammy for his spoken-word children's album] Halloween ... Don't Give Up on Me.

My marriage? Up to now everything's okay. But it's a real marriage - imperfect and very difficult. It's all about people evolving somewhat simultaneously through their lives. I think we've emotionally evolved.

I've been happily married to Chris for almost 20 years.

I recommend it to all people: Get down on the floor and look at the world from where the child looks at it.