Plimpton Quotes & Sayings

I am a United States citizen and I vote. — Martha Plimpton

I almost never have a plan for myself ... I'm not ambitious in that way. — Martha Plimpton

That's the thing about interviews, at some point you're going to change your mind. But it's there forever and you can't escape it. — Martha Plimpton

You do not cut a check in the state of Kansas to John Doe, executioner. The executioner is paid in cash so there's no trail to him — George Plimpton

He was interviewed in the early '60s by a young novelist, Pati Hill. — George Plimpton

I'd just like to see a role for women where someone who isn't traditionally attractive is not portraying the best friend. You know, the character that only speaks in questions. 'Gee, are you gonna go out with him? Do you think I look fat?' — Martha Plimpton

'Community' is a great show. I love 'Raising Hope' with Martha Plimpton. And I love 'The Middle' - another Chicagoan in there is Neil Flynn, who used to play the janitor in 'Scrubs.' — Jim O'Heir

I've often said in the past that I thought MTV was sort of evil incarnate and signified the beginning of the end. And I don't know if I'm entirely wrong about that, but they did sign my paychecks a year ago, so I guess I'm part of the problem. — Martha Plimpton

I watch things that are fun, or funny, or interesting. — Martha Plimpton

Well, I have to write. A lot of people forget that. They think I'm sort of crazy baffoon who can't make up his mind what to do in life — George Plimpton

It is also one of the pleasures of oral biography, in that the reader, rather than editor, is jury. — George Plimpton

I never understood people who don't have bookshelves. — George Plimpton

I wouldn't say Malkovich is totally insane, but he's not living in the real world. He's living in his world, which is a fine world to live in apparently. — Martha Plimpton

I remember being awed by it - the uniqueness and nicety of style - and I suspect I was a bit jealous because we were more or less of the same generation. — George Plimpton

I don't pay attention to the ratings. — Martha Plimpton

Woke up this morning to the incredible news that I was nominated for an Emmy, and a shower full of dog poop. Apparently my dog is so excited, she has explosive diarrhea. I truly could not be more thankful to the Emmy voters for including me in this brilliant company of extraordinary women. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go clean up an enormous amount of dog poop out of my shower. Yay! — Martha Plimpton

In the theater, as an actor, you're welcoming people into your house. — Martha Plimpton

I like things that are civilized. — Martha Plimpton

I'm hoping maybe people like working with me because I like what I do for a living and I want to have a good time. — Martha Plimpton

I've been doing old-people things since I was a child. — Martha Plimpton

During my teen years, for Halloween, I went as a registered voter. — Martha Plimpton

I don't like to get bored and don't like to repeat myself. — Martha Plimpton

Women have always been at the forefront of progressive movements. Women can be depended on when you need bodies in the streets for women's rights and human rights. — Martha Plimpton

Plimpton was a presence. He looked for ways in which he could make himself ridiculous. That made him a great storyteller. — Stefan Fatsis

I would almost rather be in debt constantly than work with horrible people that I hate. — Martha Plimpton

I've had cats all my life and obviously loved them, but the litter box, and the having to always get a house sitter, they're just too - they're too rigid. Cats are too needy somehow. — Martha Plimpton

I hate those people who say 'I don't own a television' - I own one and I watch it whenever I can. — Martha Plimpton

I like cluttered, old, dark-wood antiques. I like character. — Martha Plimpton

I feel comfortable in the presence of oddity. Probably because I'm a little bit odd. — Martha Plimpton

Once when we were fifteen, River (Phoenix) and I went out for this fancy dinner in Manhattan and I ordered soft-shell crabs. He left the restaurant and walked around on Park Avenue, crying. I went out and said, "I love you so much. Why?" He had such a pain that I was eating an animal, that he hadn't impressed on me what was right. I loved him for that. For his dramatic desire that we share every belief, that I be with him all the way — Martha Plimpton

...and so it was that my wealth came to be measured in books — Colleen Plimpton

I want to be true to the character and maintain some consistency and give the audience what they love while at the same time keeping things fresh and grow the character. — Martha Plimpton

We don't want to come off as pro-smoking. Even though we didn't smoke real cigarettes at all, you want to be careful of people's sensitivities. — Martha Plimpton

I'm so sick of hearing how there's no strong roles for women. I don't care about strong roles. I just want to see women who are characters! A nun, a serial killer, a housewife, as long as there's some depth there. — Martha Plimpton

I'm a personality - like a George Plimpton who effectively plays himself in a bunch of different roles, or a Paul Lynde-type character. — John Hodgman

My mom just didn't put a very high premium on me being like really famous or really wealthy or anything. — Martha Plimpton

See, I don't watch reality television anymore. I watched a little bit of it for awhile, but I found it turned my soul into a black sludge, and I just did not find it healthy or good for me at all, because I would watch it and be disgusted, disgusted. — Martha Plimpton

I have never been convinced there's anything inherently wrong in having fun. — George Plimpton

It's long been accepted as fact that the availability of family planning services saves lives. Where women have access to these services, children and families are healthier, and society at large benefits. — Martha Plimpton

Give me good books, good conversations, and my Trek Y-Foil, and I shall want for nothing else. — George Plimpton

At the base of it was the urge, if you wanted to play football, to knock someone down, that was what the sport was all about, the will to win closely linked with contact. — George Plimpton

It's an unusual situation for me to be working and making a living. — Martha Plimpton

I prefer to think of the audience as a single living organism with which I am sharing a singular, never-to-be-repeated experience. — Martha Plimpton

It's like people always say, Well, does sport teach you anything in life? It teaches you certain things, but it doesn't teach you other things. It doesn't teach, as I say, very much about marriage, very much about how to make a living, any of those things. — George Plimpton

There are an infinite number of ways to be moved in the theater. — Martha Plimpton

Golf cannot be played in anger, or in any mood of emotiional excess. Half the golf balls struck by amateurs are hit if not in rage surely in bewilderment, or gloom, or in cynicism, or even hysterically - all of those emotional excesses must be contained by the professional. Which is why balance is one of the essential ingredients of golf. Professionals invariably trudge phlegmatically around the course - whatever emotions are seething within - with the grim yet placid and bored look of cowpokes, slack-bodied in their saddles, who have been tending the same herd for two months. — George Plimpton

At this point, I don't get hired a lot because people don't think I could finance a movie. — Martha Plimpton

He still has the same way of calling to me, as if I'm still new to him, as if he has yet to get over me. — George Plimpton

I am a fierce patriot, and I try to be outspoken about my beliefs. — Martha Plimpton

You'll notice my eyes have sort of glazed over. — Martha Plimpton

It's easier to lecture women on sexual morality than it is to explain why all Americans shouldn't have comprehensive, fair, and equal health care coverage. — Martha Plimpton

I was very obsessed with Ruth Gordon. I really didn't foresee me having any type of career as a leading lady at all because it was just blonds. I just wasn't the type - I was told that by casting directors. I auditioned for Running on Empty [1988] and The Mosquito Coast [1986], and Martha Plimpton was just killing me. — Winona Ryder

My mother had been an actress and we came from that world in New York, the theater world and the downtown sort of theater scene, and so I guess we didn't really have what you'd call like a Hollywood kind of life at all. — Martha Plimpton

As an actress for most of my life, I am profoundly familiar with poverty. — Martha Plimpton

The New York Times published the guest list on the front page. The masks were a brilliant concept. — George Plimpton

Being nominated is the win. For me, being nominated is winning. It's just unbelievable. — Martha Plimpton

Cigarettes are an instant signifier in culture. It punctuates a joke, or puts that extra zing on a punch line. I like them as a prop. I think it can be really useful for character and texture and contrast and all of that. — Martha Plimpton

The word 'equality' shows up too much in our founding documents for anyone to pretend it's not the American way. — Martha Plimpton

Independent film is not only an oxymoron; it doesn't exist anymore. — Martha Plimpton

Things come to you in life when you're prepared for them, when you're ready for them. — Martha Plimpton

As happens with people who love a thing too much, it destroys them.
Oscar Wilde said, 'You destroy the thing that you love.' It's the other way around. What you love destroys you. — George Plimpton

If I'm enjoying myself, I find my opportunities for more fun become greater. — Martha Plimpton

'The Paris Review' was always the pinnacle: it was the place to be published. You were thrilled if you were published in 'The Paris Review,' and George Plimpton himself was practically mythical. He was a legendary figure. — James Salter

I wasn't paraded around for sale at all. My mother wasn't into that. — Martha Plimpton

It's a very long and difficult schedule on a single-camera show. — Martha Plimpton

I am not bored at all. I am not bored in the least. — Martha Plimpton

A male star named "T.T. Boy" ... is a legend in the business [actor in commercial porn films]. T.T. Boy does not look at all glamorous - he's a small, tough-guy, assistant mobster type; sometimes he chews gum during his lovemaking scenes. He pounds his partners ... Once memorably described as 'nothing more than a life-support system for his penis,' he got the kind of admiring, solid applause reserved for a large artillery piece going by in a parade. — George Plimpton

A lot of people in this country right now are living with multiple generations under one roof, struggling to make ends meet. — Martha Plimpton

I love dogs because they're so adaptable. — Martha Plimpton

My mom and I used to listen to records, read, and take train rides across the country in the summer. It was a very chill life. She didn't expose me to anything that was ahead of my development, but she expected me to adjust to her world - she did not expect to adjust to mine. — Martha Plimpton

The pleasure of sport was so often the chance to indulge the cessation of time itself
the pitcher dawdling on the mound, the skier poised at the top of a mountain trail, the basketball player with the rough skin of the ball against his palm preparing for a foul shot, the tennis player at set point over his opponent
all of them savoring a moment before committing themselves to action. — George Plimpton

Women know the financial, social and physical costs of not having access to basic health care. — Martha Plimpton

Who owns your body? You or the state? — Martha Plimpton

When you're working with good people it brings good things out in you. — Martha Plimpton

My favorite monologue in the book is Kate Harrington's story of her relationship with Truman. — George Plimpton

It's not common for a woman on television, especially if she's the mom of the family, to be funny. She's usually a straight man or foil. — Martha Plimpton

I just want to be clear, I am a very dark and bitter person, but I think on some level, everything really does come when it's meant to come. — Martha Plimpton

The '80s to me, more than anything else, represents a time of real criminal activity in the office of the president: an incredibly disparate economy in terms of the class distinctions and whatnot, and a tremendous shallowness - a lot of sort of bank robbery by executives. — Martha Plimpton

People seem to think that you should be willing to speak to them whether they're jerks or not. — Martha Plimpton

It's long past time we started focusing on the solutions that actually keep women healthy, instead of using basic aspects of women's health as a tool of cultural, moral, and political control. — Martha Plimpton

I don't know if I've learned anything about people, but I've learned about Twitter. — Martha Plimpton

Party of the Century by Deborah Davis, about Truman Capote's famous Black and White Ball. Capote by Gerald Clarke. Truman Capote by George Plimpton. Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M. by Sam Wasson. Slim, the memoir of Slim Keith. And The Sisters by David Grafton, about Babe Paley and her sisters. — Melanie Benjamin

Very often a job will come along that speaks to the place you're in as a person at that very moment. And usually once I've done it I feel like that part is over. — Martha Plimpton

One comes to a decision based on what one wants, not based on what one doesn't want. Got it? — Martha Plimpton

The smaller the ball used in the sport, the better the book. — George Plimpton

It's not so weird that four generations are living together under the same roof and trying to make it work. It's how a lot of people in this country are living right now. — Martha Plimpton

I live like a crazy old pack rat. — Martha Plimpton

There are so many brilliant women on television right now. — Martha Plimpton

Rick Bass is one of the best writers of his generation. — George Plimpton

It's important to me if I'm having a good time than I feel like the work is better. The quality of it is better and my level of interest is higher. — Martha Plimpton

Things tend to come when they are meant to come. I know that sounds kind of like spiritual and cheesy, but I think things come when they're meant to come. — Martha Plimpton

Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn't know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn't know he was a novelist either.
(Interview in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Eighth Series, ed. George Plimpton, 1988) — John Irving

I am not a morning person. I like to sleep in. — Martha Plimpton

Actors, they come and go, you know. — Martha Plimpton