Winona Quotes & Sayings

I feel my best when I'm happy. — Winona Ryder

I was an extreme tomboy. I did competitive gymnastics for over 10 years. I cut my hair like Winona Ryder, with that little pixie cut. — Serinda Swan

My problems seemed so glamorous to other people, and everyone just thought I was so lucky. But then, I was lucky because my family was really there for me. I think I just felt like I really wanted to hold on to who I was as a person, and try to have as much of a normal life as I could. — Winona Ryder

There's a scene [in the 1990 film Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael] in my bedroom where I start eating Almond Roca. I was so young. It was before I knew the tricks of moviemaking, and I didn't know you shoot a lot of different angles. I gobbled them and didn't realize I had to keep doing it. So I had to eat 64 Almond Roca that day. I got so sick. In the beginning you're like, 'Ooh, that looks good.' But hours later, no. — Winona Ryder

Focus should be on the art of film, not on the business of film. — Winona Ryder

I remember when I was doing Mermaids [1990], I was 16 and they gave me a B12 shot once. My parents weren't there, and when they did come, they freaked out. They were terrified, because of the Judy Garland stories. I know it's just vitamin B, but it did give you a boost. — Winona Ryder

I don't understand all the nuances of the women's movement. But I do understand that there are feminists who want to challenge the dominant paradigm, not only of patriarchy, but of where the original wealth came from and the relationship of that wealth to other peoples and the earth. That is the only way that that I think you can really get to the depth of the problem. — Winona LaDuke

People think that they just want movies like Pretty Woman, when really they - at least the ones that I know personally - have been waiting for something that doesn't completely insult them. — Winona Ryder

I really lucked out in terms of how my parents encouraged me to develop my own personality so I didn't just feel incredibly insecure and like I didn't fit in. — Winona Ryder

Even though 'Heathers' didn't make a lot of money, I really was able to transition into a situation where people thought I could play an attractive role because of it. — Winona Ryder

Life's short, so if you're going to spend months doing something, it's gotta be pretty special ... But I'm very happy to enter my Baby Jane years, and hopefully segue into the Ruth Gordon years. — Winona Ryder

I think it's important to have as much as a normal life and take the time to get perspective because it only helps your work in the long run. — Winona Ryder

The United States - you know, native people are large landowners, but the military has a huge chunk of our territories. And in those, there are a number of places that are our sacred sites. — Winona LaDuke

I think that as actresses - and I've definitely gone through this in a really bizarre way, because I worked so much and was really lucky with the roles that I got when I was younger - I remember hearing the older actors saying, "It gets tough," and thinking, "Really? I can't imagine." — Winona Ryder

The difference between a white man and an Indian is this- A white man wants to leave money to his children. An Indian wants to leave forests. — Winona LaDuke

In the time of the sacred sites and the crashing of ecosystems and worlds, it may be worth not making a commodity out of all that is revered. — Winona LaDuke

I was regarded as the school freak which further reinforced a lot of inhibitions and doubts I had about myself. I was a shy, frightened teenager for a long time. — Winona Ryder

I think I'm learning to be bolder in my career choices and be more confident in my personal life. I haven't always felt very secure as an individual, but now I feel I certain confidence and sense of self that gets me through the day a lot better than before. — Winona Ryder

You look at people like Gena Rowlands, but she had [John] Cassavetes to write these amazing roles for her. — Winona Ryder

If you're going to spend most of your time in your democracy figuring out how to get oil by intervening into other people's countries and insuring that you follow it with military might, we think there's an alternative. Which would be renewable energy. — Winona LaDuke

I'm not interested in playing the girl that's just there to make the guy, you know, give him a talking to. — Winona Ryder

I was so lucky that I got to meet certain people. It came through Roddy McDowall, who had become a photographer and would do these portraits of celebrities. Then he would get another well-known person to write a thing. He photographed me when I was 15 or 16, and he got Jason Robards to write the thing because he was sort of my mentor. And Roddy would invite me to these dinner parties that were insane. Like, Elizabeth Taylor and Maureen O'Hara and people that were just crazy. I still can't really believe that I met them. — Winona Ryder

You know something has really stuck in Tim's head when he's drawn what the character looks like. Weird Girl and Elsa actually switched places, at one point. I may be mis-remembering it, but the original design for Weird Girl was actually Elsa, but then it became Winona Ryder's character, and the new Weird Girl was just fantastic with those giant wide eyes. — John August

Reverend Hale is so interesting because at first he's like, "Oh, she's got the mark." Then by the end he's like, "You're all crazy." — Winona Ryder

I was very lucky because Tim Burton really gave me a career. I don't think Hollywood would've known what to do with me. If I hadn't done 'Beetlejuice,' I think I would've just gone back to my school. — Winona Ryder

On my reservation, we had one of the most abundant fisheries in the world and hundreds of thousands of acres of wild rice beds. We've lost a lot of it, but there's still natural wealth that could support our communities. — Winona LaDuke

The reality is, is that the military is full of native nomenclature. That's what we would call it. You've got Black Hawk helicopters, Apache Longbow helicopters. You've got Tomahawk missiles. The term used when you leave a military base in a foreign country is to go 'off the reservation, into Indian Country.' — Winona LaDuke

I remember the whole thing with the word ambition. I was messed up for a while because I associated it with certain people who just want to be famous. I think, for a while, it was kind of a dirty word for women. — Winona Ryder

If I showed you scripts from my first few movies, the descriptions of my characters all said 'the ugly girl'. — Winona Ryder

As a character, it's very interesting to play someone who wants to change their life and have him change it. — Winona Ryder

The reality is that the founding fathers were land speculators. The fact was that you couldn't vote in this country if you did not own land, and that was basically you had to be a white man who owned land. Now how did they get that land? They basically had to steal it from someone, and that would be probably the Indians. And so most of the initial founding fathers were, while they may have had some really nice ideas about democracy, they had a lot of issues with people of color. They had a lot of issues with people who held things that they coveted. — Winona LaDuke

I remember being 18, and my first boyfriend said to me, "Unless you're in the room, you don't know if it's true." We were talking about gossip. — Winona Ryder

I love photography and first editions. I have that in my genes. My father was an archivist. — Winona Ryder

If a film is well made, then great, whatever it's about. — Winona Ryder

You can't pay enough money to ... cure that feeling of being broken and confused. — Winona Ryder

There are actors I know personally, or I've heard them say, "The less known about me, the better, because I just want people to think of me as the character." I think Matt Damon said that recently. He has a point and I think I get that. — Winona Ryder

Do girls on periods like chocolate?" Winona asks.
"Period or no period - girls like fucking chocolate. — Krista Ritchie

You've got to grow up sometime. — Winona Ryder

In high school, I dressed up as every James Bond girl. I was a teenage Pussy Galore. — Winona Ryder

Food for us comes from our relatives, whether they have wings or fins or roots. That is how we consider food. Food has a culture. It has a history. It has a story. It has relationships. — Winona LaDuke

I have this sense that I didn't really start growing up until my twenties. — Winona Ryder

I'm the type who'd rather not work than work on something I'm not into. I've done that a couple of times, and I feel like I can totally see it in my performance. — Winona Ryder

Even though I never really had to pound the pavement as an actor, I always worked really hard. But, at the same time, I always felt like people thought that I didn't have to struggle even though I was struggling. — Winona Ryder

We must keep these waters for wild rice, these trees for maple syrup, our lakes for fish, and our land and aquifers for all of our relatives - whether they have fins, roots, wings, or paws. — Winona LaDuke

A woman who wears high heels is very different, I think, than a woman who wears sandals. — Winona Ryder

When you finally accept that it's OK not to have answers and it's OK not to be perfect, you realize that feeling confused is a normal part of what it is to be a human being. — Winona Ryder

I'm quite comfortable looking at myself in movies, probably because I've been doing it for so long, since I was a kid. So I sort of watched myself grow up and go through adolescence, like, basically on camera. — Winona Ryder

The Lockean assumption that if we put our labor to it then it becomes our own is totally fallacious. We have to figure out how to leave things alone, and build an economic system that's not built on a linear model, but instead on a cyclical model, because that's the natural world - it's cyclical and not linear. That is going to take a lot of transformation. — Winona LaDuke

Our forests are not for toilet paper. They are worth more standing than cut. That deserves to be defended, not only by native peoples but also by environmentalists. — Winona LaDuke

I see a lot of damage to Mother Earth. I see water being taken from creeks where water belongs to animals, not to oil companies. — Winona LaDuke

Uranium mining in northern Canada has left over 120 million tons of radioactive waste. This amount represents enough material to cover the Trans-Canada Highway two meters deep across the country. Present production of uranium waste from Saskatchewan alone occurs at the rate of over 1 million tons annually. Since 1975, hospitalization for cancer, birth defects and circulatory illnesses in that area have increased dramatically - between 123 and 600 percent in that region. — Winona LaDuke

Post office closures in the Dakotas and Minnesota will impact many communities, but the White Earth reservation villages, and other tribal towns of Squaw Lake, Ponemah, Brookston in Minnesota, and Manderson, Wounded Knee and Wakpala (South Dakota) as well as Mandaree in North Dakota will mean hardships for a largely Native community. — Winona LaDuke

Food sovereignty is an affirmation of who we are as indigenous peoples and a way, one of the most surefooted ways, to restore our relationship with the world around us. — Winona LaDuke

I love westerns. John Ford is one of the 10 best directors. — Winona Ryder

Somehow I was invited to visit with Audrey Hepburn. I had this afternoon with her, and she gave me a couple things. She was so gracious and everything you would think that she would be. — Winona Ryder

Across the continent, on the shores of small tributaries, in the shadows of sacred mountains, on the vast expanse of the prairies, or in the safety of the woods, prayers are being repeated, as they have for thousands of years, and common people with uncommon courage and the whispers of their ancestors in their ears continue their struggles to protect the land and water and trees on which their very existence is based. And like small tributaries joining together to form a mighty river, their force and power grows. — Winona LaDuke

Remember, I'm the kind of kid who used to get stuffed into a locker by school bullies. I've never felt like I'm a big star at any level of my life. — Winona Ryder

I'm not into wrinkles. — Winona Ryder

Winona! I said, quashing my first initial panic at finding a horned, tailed, demonic creature smiling at me. — Kim Harrison

I feel like I had to learn how to take care of myself and find out what made me happy aside from just making films. — Winona Ryder

We filed a constitutional rights lawsuit on my reservation, and I had to go out and interview all these old people. And I found that many of the old people on my reservation didn't know who was president. That kind of pointed out to me the irrelevance at times of who is in Washington. — Winona LaDuke

Brothers and Sisters: Our ancient homeland is spotted today with an array of chemical dumps. Along the Niagara River, dioxin, a particularly deadly substance, threatens the remaining life there and in the waters which flow from there. Forestry departments spray the surviving forests with powerful insecticides to encourage tourism by people seeking a few days or weeks away from the cities where the air hangs heavy with sulphur and carbon oxides. — Winona LaDuke

The older you get, the more yourself you can be and the less worried you are about what other people think. — Winona Ryder

I don't hang out with agents and producers and I'm not into the business side at all. — Winona Ryder

I had this big complex because I didn't go to college. There was a whole era where I got linked to everybody. People that I had never met. I was like, "How? I'm home alone reading chapter 12 of a book." — Winona Ryder

In the end, there is no absence of irony: the integrity of what is sacred to Native Americans will be determined by the government that has been responsible for doing everything in its power to destroy Native American cultures. — Winona LaDuke

It's equally as important to me to be a good friend and a good sister and a good daughter. I'm very close with my family and friends. — Winona Ryder

I loved movies, but I can't remember ever really wanting to be an actress, and I certainly didn't imagine ever being in a movie. I think I wanted to be a writer. — Winona Ryder

We are launching a campaign called Wind, Not War, which is about the alternatives to a fossil-fuels-based economy and looking at wind, an alternative energy, as key to that in terms of issues of global climate change as well as issues of democracy. — Winona LaDuke

It's interesting because First Wives Club was the first movie that made a shitload of money that starred all women over a certain age. That was a milestone that made you think, "Oh, things are going to change." — Winona Ryder

Most actors don't know what they're going to do next, so you get into this thing where you have to force yourself to have another life outside of acting. And then, as soon as you start something in this sort of normal life that you're trying to live, you get a job. So you have this constant struggle because you want to be able to commit to things and to finish things in your life, but then you also want to be able to act. — Winona Ryder

The thing about being an Indian person is that you feel most at home with your own people. — Winona LaDuke

In retrospect, I think maybe Audrey Hepburn was going to talk to me about doing something for UNICEF. I was so overwhelmed to just even be in her presence and I was very young, but it was really special and unforgettable. — Winona Ryder

I think of some of my friends who have passed to the spirit world but are who here with me when I go to events and when I walk in my own community. My sisters, Ingred, my sister Marsha, and my sister Nielock. All cofounders of the Indigenous Women's Network with me. All long time women activists in the native community. — Winona LaDuke

Someone needs to explain to me why wanting clean drinking water makes you an activist, and why proposing to destroy water with chemical warfare doesnt make a corporation a terrorist — Winona LaDuke

I was inspired by lots of people, certainly in acting and in writing and stuff, but I never wanted to be somebody else. — Winona Ryder

In most of America, it seems you don't matter if you're not between 25 and 50. — Winona LaDuke

I'm interested in what kind of food we're going to eat as the climate changes. I'm interested in what kind of economy we're going to have in another 1,000 years. — Winona LaDuke

Another thing is, people lose perspective. It is a cultural trait in America to think in terms of very short time periods. My advice is: learn history. Take responsibility for history. Recognise that sometimes things take a long time to change. If you look at your history in this country, you find that for most rights, people had to struggle. People in this era forget that and quite often think they are entitled, and are weary of struggling over any period of time — Winona LaDuke

Oil is drowning our oceans and drowning our boreal forests. — Winona LaDuke

Native people - about two-thirds of the uranium in the United States is on indigenous lands. On a worldwide scale, about 70 percent of the uranium is either in Aboriginal lands in Australia or up in the Subarctic of Canada, where native people are still fighting uranium mining. — Winona LaDuke

I was so spoiled in a way. I worked very hard, but there was just a wealth of great roles. — Winona Ryder

It's just people should realize that the celebrity aspect of being an actor is very rarely enjoyable for people like me who would always rather go unnoticed and disappear into the crowd. — Winona Ryder

The insecticides kill the black flies, but also destroy much of the food chain for the bird, fish, and animal life which also inhabit those regions. The fish of the Great Lakes are laced with mercury from industrial plants, and fluoride from aluminum plants poisons the land and the people. Sewage from the population centers is mixed with PCBs and PBS in the watershed of the great lakes and the Finger Lakes, and the water is virtually nowhere safe for any living creatures. — Winona LaDuke

I love books and going to bookstores. My favorite sound is the sound of the needle hitting the record. — Winona Ryder

You go through spells where you feel that maybe you're too sensitive for this world. I certainly felt that. — Winona Ryder

Most of my wardrobe is vintage, and I've worn dresses to the Oscars that I got for $10, — Winona Ryder

'Black Swan' was absolutely unbelievable. I had always dreamed of working with Darren Aronofsky, and Natalie Portman, Winona Ryder, Barbara Hershey, Mila Kunis and Vincent Cassel. The entire cast was really a dream cast, and it was amazing to work with these powerhouse women that I've just admired for so many years. — Ksenia Solo

That first movie I did, Lucas [1986], was probably the closest to me. And Beetlejuice a little bit, in the sense that I did look like that. All they did was like put a little white powder here. — Winona Ryder

Mother Earth needs us to keep our covenant. We will do this in courts, we will do this on our radio station, and we will commit to our descendants to work hard to protect this land and water for them. Whether you have feet, wings, fins, or roots, we are all in it together. — Winona LaDuke

It's part of the celebrity process but my life has never been as interesting or as wild as what's been printed about me. — Winona Ryder

It's also a question of finding good material and interesting roles. I'm not the only actress out there, and good parts just don't fall into your lap that easily. But I like most of the films I've made recently and so I'm pretty positive about the future. — Winona Ryder

I'd always find the positive in someone. — Winona Ryder

I wanted to get out of Ashland, and I thought it would be pretty cool to go to school in the East. So I asked my guidance counselor what Ivy League schools were. And I applied to Harvard, Yale and Dartmouth - that was it. My guidance counselor told me I wouldn't get into an Ivy League school. So as my act of resistance, that's all I applied to. — Winona LaDuke

Bette Davis, she was so brilliant and one of my heroes, but she worked a ton, and then she didn't get All About Eve [1950] until the last minute. Claudette Colbert was supposed to be Margo Channing, but then she broke her back and couldn't do it. That allowed Davis to play her age. — Winona Ryder

The first thing I am is a person. I am a woman. And I am part of a nation, the Indian nation. But people either relate to you as an Indian or as a woman. They relate to you as a category. A lot of people don't realize that I am not that different from everyone else. — Winona LaDuke

There's like this great thing that Bette Davis said when someone asked her, "How do you get into Hollywood?" "Take Fountain!" — Winona Ryder

I, myself, am strange and unusual — Winona Ryder

I was never strategic really, but back when I was starting out no one cared. In the acting community, box office didn't matter. I really think it was a mistake when they started paying people like $20 million to do a movie because now it's all people think about. Is she worth it? Is he worth it? — Winona Ryder

I'm not into older guys. To tell you the truth, Richard Gere is not the sexiest man alive, in my book. — Winona Ryder