Frances Farmer quotes

Frances Farmer was an American actress known for her striking performances on stage and screen in the 1930s and 1940s. Her career and personal life were marked by controversy, struggles with mental health, and conflicts with the Hollywood studio system. She remains a poignant symbol of both talent and tragedy in American cinema history. Here are 22 of her quotes:

There comes a point when a dream becomes reality and reality becomes a dream.

Frances Farmer

I wondered a little why God was such a useless thing. It seemed a waste of time to have him. After that he became less and less, until he was... nothingness.

Frances Farmer

I didn't think then, and I still don't, that I was actually sick.

Frances Farmer

I went to Sunday School and liked the stories about Christ and the Christmas star. They were beautiful. They made you warm and happy to think about. But I didn't believe them.

Frances Farmer

I have learned that to have a good friend is the purest of all God's gifts, for it is a love that has no exchange of payment.

Frances Farmer

I used to lie between cool, clean sheets at night after I'd had a bath, after I had washed my hair and scrubbed my knuckles and finger-nails and teeth. Then I could lie quite still in the dark with my face to the window with the trees in it, and talk to God.

Frances Farmer

[Hollywood]: It's a nuthouse. The other day a man phoned and wanted me to endorse a certain brand of cigarettes. I had nothing against them and in fact will smoke them or anything else that comes along, but I didn't know why he was bothering me. I thought maybe if I was nice they'd give me a carton as a thank offering, so I rather tentatively broached the matter of remuneration. What was the endorsement worth, I asked, and he said three thousand dollars. What are you going to do in an atmosphere like that?

Frances Farmer

What they had me doing first was autographing copies of Come and Get It at the Bon Marche, where I had been fired a couple of years back. That was bad enough but think of me autographing a book written by somebody else. That took crust but it didn't turn out so badly because when I got to the store, about twenty people finally strolled in and looked at me from a distance and kept their buying firmly in control. What the Goldwyn people had forgotten was that up that way I'm still remembered as the freak from West Seattle High.

Frances Farmer

The more people pointed at me in scorn the more stubborn I got and when they began calling me the Bad Girl of West Seattle High, I tried to live up to it.

Frances Farmer

That satisfied me until I began to figure that if God loved all his children equally, why did he bother about my red hat and let other people lose their fathers and mothers for always?

Frances Farmer

The Sunday School teacher talked too much in the way our grade school teacher used to when she told us about George Washington. Pleasant, pretty stories, but not true.

Frances Farmer

I couldn't get that same feeling during the day, with my hands in dirty dish water and the hard sun showing up the dirtiness on the roof tops. And after a time, even at night, the feeling of God didn't last. I began to wonder what the minister meant when he said, "God, the father, sees even the smallest sparrow fall. He watches over all his children." That jumbled it all up for me. But I was sure of one thing. If God were a father, with children, that cleanliness I had been feeling wasn't God. So at night, when I went to bed, I would think, "I am clean. I am sleepy." And then I went to sleep. It didn't keep me from enjoying the cleaness any less. I just knew that God wasn't there. He was a man on a throne in Heaven, so he was easy to forget.

Frances Farmer

It was pretty sad, because for the first time I found how stupid people could be. It sort of made me feel alone in the world. The more people pointed at me in scorn the more stubborn I got and when they began calling me the Bad Girl of West Seattle High, I tried to live up to it.

Frances Farmer

But I was sure of one thing. If God were a father, with children, that cleanliness I had been feeling wasn't God.

Frances Farmer

I couldn't get that same feeling during the day, with my hands in dirty dish water and the hard sun showing up the dirtiness on the roof tops. And after a time, even at night, the feeling of God didn't last.

Frances Farmer

I went to Sunday School and liked the stories about Christ and the Christmas star. They were beautiful. They made you warm and happy to think about. But I didn't believe them. The Sunday School teacher talked too much in the way our grade school teacher used to when she told us about George Washington. Pleasant, pretty stories, but not true.

Frances Farmer

Religion was too vague. God was different. He was something real, something I could feel. But there were only certain times when I could feel it. I used to lie between cool, clean sheets at night after I'd had a bath, after I had washed my hair and scrubbed my knuckles and finger-nails and teeth. Then I could lie quite still in the dark with my face to the window with the trees in it, and talk to God. "I am clean, now. I've never been as clean. I'll never be cleaner."

Frances Farmer

I think God just died of old age. And, when I realized that he wasn't any more, it didn't shock me. It seemed natural and right!

Frances Farmer

Religion was too vague. God was different. He was something real, something I could feel. But there were only certain times when I could feel it. I used to lie between cool, clean sheets at night after I'd had a bath, after I had washed my hair and scrubbed my knuckles and finger-nails and teeth. Then I could lie quite still in the dark with my face to the window with the trees in it, and talk to God. "I am clean, now. I've never been as clean. I'll never be cleaner." And somehow, it was God. I wasn't sure that it was... just something cool and dark and clean.

Frances Farmer