I had the advantage, that I know Swedish. So I had the Swedish book and I had a lot of English translations, and German translations, and I did everything to make the best English translation of August Strindberg's Miss Julie I could. And then, there I went. "Oh! I think she's thinking this, but I think she should say it!" And so on. It's wonderful to do that.

Liv Ullmann

Categorized in : Thinking Book August

One of the things I like about my profession, and that I find healthy, is that one constantly has to break oneself to pieces.

Liv Ullmann

healthy motivational inspirational

Nobody is one block of harmony. We are all afraid of something, or feel limited in something. We all need somebody to talk to. It would be good if we talked to each other, not just pitter patter but real talk. We shouldn't be afraid, because most people really like this contact; that you show you are vulnerable makes them free to be vulnerable too. It's so much easier to be together when we drop our masks.

Liv Ullmann

block real friendship

I think of all the choices I never knew. And those I let be made for me - to please, from fear, for love. Where did they disappear to, those choices that I never made? They are all part of who I am. They are the legacy I leave behind, they are the finished portrait of myself I cannot change.

Liv Ullmann

who-i-am choices thinking

It's better to wake up alone knowing that you're alone, than waking up with someone and still be lonely

Liv Ullmann

wake-up lonely knowing

Sometimes I get a little tired of it. But you know, what a privilege, to get tired of working with Ingmar Bergman.

Liv Ullmann

privilege tired littles

I am learning that if I just go on accepting the framework for life that others have given me, if I fail to make my own choices, the reason for my life will be missing. I will be unable to recognize that which I have the power to change.

Liv Ullmann

choices missing goes-on

We are different. We are equal in every way but our voices are important to each other and our need to want to listen to each other and try to understand, because sometimes we are so difficult to understand. Men to understand us, and we to understand men. And we don't. We don't connect the way we should.

Liv Ullmann

voice important men

If only we could accept that there is no difference between us where human values are concerned. Whatever sex.

Liv Ullmann

differences accepting sex

Books have always been living things to me. Some of my encounters with new authors have changed my life a little. When I have been perplexed, looking for something I could not define to myself, a certain book has turned up, approached me as a friend would. And between it's cover carried the questions and the answers I was looking for.

Liv Ullmann

encounters answers book

Life experiences become acting experiences, which in turn become life experiences.

Liv Ullmann

life-experience actors acting

Oh, those wonder-filled evenings when acting enables me for a short moment to have more life.

Liv Ullmann

evening actors acting

I do not want to arrive at the end of life and then be asked what I made of it and have to answer: 'I acted.' I want to be able to say: 'I loved and I was mystified. It was a joy sometimes, and I knew grief. And I would like to do it all again.'

Liv Ullmann

grief joy life

I looked into the mirror and saw this middle-aged woman who keeps invading my face.

Liv Ullmann

saws mirrors age

reality can be magnificent even when life is not.

Liv Ullmann

magnificent life-is reality

Nothing ever comes to an end. Wherever one has sunk roots that emanate from one's best or truest self, one will always find a home.

Liv Ullmann

self roots home

The fear inside of loneliness: That only what others have is real.

Liv Ullmann

loneliness real

What I have always loved most in men is imperfection. I get moved by the wrinkles on the throat of a man. It makes me love him more. I think it is sad that more women don't take the chance that maybe men will be moved by seeing the chin a little less firm than it used to be, that a man will be more in love with his wife because he remembers who she was and sees who she is and thinks, God, isn't that lovely that this happened to her. And be moved by life telling its story there.

Liv Ullmann

wrinkles men thinking

It is tough to be a woman. Also as an actor, but more so as a director. And even more today, when distributors and producers are looking at different kinds of films and maybe not necessarily what a woman would want to do.

Liv Ullmann

actors different directors

It is only the untalented director who imagines him or herself in every part, wants his or her own thoughts and emotions portrayed; it is only the untalented who make their own limitations those of the actors as well.

Liv Ullmann

actors directors art

Choice is the essence of what I believe it is to be human.

Liv Ullmann

choices essence believe