JezeChelle : 2013

Saturday, August 10, 2013

"I'm finally happy, because I'm doing something that really needs to be done. I'm needed for things other than my skin and my hair and my history--all that silly baggage that people still carry around for me. I'm not saying that films are worthless, but they pale in comparison to sitting at the bedside of a lonely person who needs to be loved or comforted. It's far more rewarding to sit in a waiting room with a family waiting for help and results than it is to wait for the thirteenth take of a scene. You see, I got smart and useful in my old age. There's hope for us all." --Elizabeth Taylor on her AIDS activism/Interview with James Grissom/1991/

From "Elizabeth Taylor: The Complete Divinity."

Magnificent until the end. Cherished forever.

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Tennessee Williams from James Grissom's "Follies of God"

"It somehow has to happen. It somehow has to hang together. We must all hang together, support each other, be a distant shore to which someone, anyone, can swim. There is no reason in the world to continue, really, unless all of us decide that it is good and necessary and kind to do so. No one really allows a book, a play, a child, a piece of music--anything at all--to become, to exist, to thrive except for the dreamer who wants to matter, who wants to commemorate a moment, a memory.

"Why is it so necessary to know why things happen? Why things turn out the way they do? I'm not against knowledge, but I am against the bland refusal of so many to acknowledge magic and mystery. Strange things happen all the time--the result of energy and faith and herculean will. Don't always get to the bottom of things. Get to the heart of things.

"To know too much and do too little--to believe too little--is to me suicidal.

"Every work of art is enclosed in that bottle that is thrown into the water of humanity. It awaits an audience and surcease. Be the one on the distant shore to pick it up, acknowledge it, and rush to help.

"Ultimately, we cannot be alone with or for anything. We have to get in the mix. Come with kindness." Tennessee Williams/Interview with James Grissom/1982/Photograph by Cecil Beaton/