- To become a comedienne is the most difficult of all, I think, but it is also difficult to continue to be one after you have learned the technique.
- Not a single manager in New York had faith in me. They all said: 'Oh, why not go on being yourself? It is foolish to try to play other sorts of roles,' not realizing that I wasn't being myself at all. That person they saw on the stage was not I. It was something which I had created, and one day I found myself almost in the position of Frankenstein. It wasn't I, but it was a strong as I, and in another season I felt that that person which managers and public thought I was would have dominated me completely. There would have been no I - only It.
- It was all an accident in the first place, my being a comedienne. I came down from Canada to go to dramatic school here in New York. They gave each of the prospective pupils a book and said now sit here and be reading and when you hear a loud knock at the door just follow your impulse, only do something. When the knock came I grabbed my book and sat on it and tried to look demure as I said 'Come in.' immediately they said, 'She is a comedienne,' and they started to drill me in the way a good comedienne should go.
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