Emma Thompson Biography | Inspiration Quotations | Motivation Quotes

Emma Thompson Motivational Quotations:

• “A lot of very beautiful women can be a pain because all they're thinking about is how they look.”

•  “My appearance has changed a lot over the years, but it has far more to do with how I feel about being a woman.”

• “It’s unfortunate and I really wish I wouldn't have to say this, but I really like human beings who have suffered. They're kinder.”

•  “Any problem, big or small, within a family, always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isn't listening.”

• “You can't imagine what satisfaction can be gotten from throwing a pie into someone's face.”

•  “This morning, I went to wipe my hands on a tea towel, and while I was using it, it seemed like it felt a bit light. I unfolded it and realized my daughter had cut little bits out of it to make frocks for her dolls!”

•  “Maybe I don't take myself so seriously any more. And I don't care how I'm judged. I'm past all that.”

•  “I have a nervous breakdown in the film and in one scene I get to stand at the top of the stairs waving an empty sherry bottle which is, of course, a typical scene from my daily life, so isn't much of a stretch.”

•  “I don't think people understand that being poor means you have to work from dawn until dusk just to survive through the day. I think there's some notion that poor people lie about all day not doing anything.”

•  “If you've got to my age, you've probably had your heart broken many times. So it's not that difficult to unpack a bit of grief from some little corner of your heart and cry over it.”

•  “Sometimes you'll have some things, and sometimes you'll have other things. And you do not need it all at once; it's not good for you.”

•  “I do think that despite my best efforts to resist it, I am now a grown-up. It's due to lots of very difficult decisions that you make over a long period of time - about motherhood, wifehood, and work, and all the things that one has to make decisions about.”

•  “I've a problem with the word charity because I think that NGOs, as I prefer calling them, really do take the work of moral and social responsibilities that ought to be taken on by governments.”

•  “Children are the most wonderful audiences. What's struck me most is that that they watch it so silently, until the end when they shriek and shout and clap.”

•  “I don't mean being famous is a perk, because one knows that it's not necessarily a perk, but there are certain perks to being well-known and respected in one's field. Public perks. Like, I don't know, general friendliness and willingness to please, just to point out two.”

•  “We've got people looking at our seamy side and our sad side a lot of the time because that's easier. It's much more difficult to make a film about happiness with lots of jokes in it.”

•  “It's not my fault that there is this gap between rich and poor, it is the fault of governments. I want a different world. One where I don't wake up thinking I'm so lucky to be able to feed my daughter.”

•  “My worst quality is impatience.”

•  “My mother has never approved of high heels. As a result, I have never been able to walk in high heels - and they were all I ever wanted. So of course, my daughter has two pairs.”

•  “But when I lose my temper, I find it difficult to forgive myself. I feel I've failed. I can be calm in a crisis, in the face of death or things that hurt badly. I don't get hysterical, which may be masochistic of me.”

•  “There is that thing about not working with animals and children - I don't think that's true. Although you should never work with donkeys.”

•  “And it's absolutely true that male sexual behaviour and female responses to male demands change a lot when they start communicating - and the levels of the communication that I've seen on the ground in very, very poor areas are so high and I think why don't we have that here?”

•  “A lot of people in my world - in the acting world - have either lost friends to Aids or live with HIV because its origin in our culture, in New York for instance, was in the gay community.”

•  “I have had lots of friends who've been affected by Aids and a very good friend of mine, Oscar Moore, died of Aids and I was with him in his last year quite a bit. And of course he was a man living in a very rich culture with a wealthy family who was able to afford health care.”

• “If you don't want women to do whatever they need to do then you must provide them with food, you must provide them with shelter and their basic human rights.”

  

•  “I think that my work is my attempt, I suppose, is to try and become a piece of connective tissue. I'm trying to communicate with people here and in America - in rich countries - about what I see on the ground in badly affected areas.”

•  “It is remarkable how many misconceptions there are here about life in the developing world and I think that that knowledge gap has done a lot to contribute to the imbalance quite frankly.”

•  “Indeed - judicious, consistent parenting is a dream of mine. No judgements, learning space and listening carefully are my goals.”

•  “The fact is that young people are going to have sex whether you like it or not.”

•  “Tell him I mind having to look pretty, that's what I mind, because it is so much more of an effort.”

•  “I was brought up by very witty people who were dealing with quite difficult things: disease and death... I was brought up by people who tended to giggle at funerals.”

•  “The trouble is it's very difficult to pin-point the most important thing because Aids affects everyone in different levels of society, differently and you have to respond to it differently.”

•  “What was important was trying to create something that families could watch together and enjoy together.”

•  “We belabour, I think, under a very heavy crust of consumerism really.”

•  “I understand what it's like to come with your family, and to uproot yourself and come to another culture. You need a lot of support. People say, 'She's got her daughter; she's got her husband.' Yeah, but she hasn't got anyone else.”

• “One is a child when one has a child. No one says, 'You will never be the same again.' Which is the truth! And we're all supposed to be happy all the time. What is that about?”

• “Sometimes I get to put on posh frocks and be Madam Glamour, the vendor of my wares. My lovely friend Kath, a stylist, puts me into things I'd never dream of. But my real life is very different. It's very, very home-based - an intense domestic life, that's the core of everything.”

• “London has always been a haven for victims of cruelty, and been improved by them. Yet I can see it changing now. Outsiders are demonised, there are little bits of legislation, people are scared.”

• “I have to write for everyone. What really fascinates me is how you make films or make stories that can genuinely be shared by different groups.”

• “If you're actually allowing your creative part to control your writing rather than a more commercial instinct or motive, then you'll find that all sorts of interesting things will bubble up to the surface”

• “The thing that influenced me most in relation to 'Nanny McPhee' were the Westerns I watched with my father. All the Spaghetti Westerns; all the Virginians; all the High Chaparrals. Because if you think about the form, it's a stranger from out of town.”

• “When husbands and fathers leave, their wives and daughters tend to value themselves less as a result.”

• “Film is so much to do with perfection and how differently you can feel about someone at the beginning of the film and the end of the film.”

• “British aren't really known for their physical loveliness but firemen, generally speaking, are gorgeous.”

• “The only way you can have it all is by delegating all the running of the home to other people - which I don't ever want to do... So you do it yourself, and it takes time and energy and effort. And if you give it the time, it's profoundly enjoyable.”

• “You can't be a great mum and work the whole time necessarily; those two things aren't ideal. We have an awful lot to work on and to debate about in relation to our working lives, because it isn't working for a lot of people, particularly for a lot of women.”