Best Of

“One of the great challenges and one of the great blessings is that most people are stupid. Terribly stupid. Stupidity makes people fearful when it doesn’t make them mean. So you’ve got the stupidity to deal with, and you have to deal with this to do good work. However, being stupid and afraid, they will tend to believe what you tell them if you’re smart, and I’m smart. So you sell yourself and projects and other people all the time to remarkably stupid and powerful people. It’s exhausting; it’s frustrating; it is part of the profession. I don’t care how good you are or how tenacious you are—if you can’t deal successfully with stupid people, life—in or out of the arts—is going to be terribly difficult.”—Bette Davis/Interview with James Grissom/1984/