Quotes by Diane Cilento

• I sort of was good at writing essays. I was never very good at mathematics, and I was never very good at algebra. I loved science, but I wasn't sure of it.
• I don't think in my family anyone looked after anyone. It didn't matter how old they were.
• If you were in the film industry at that time, you were always picked up by directors who were much older. You were whisked about and shown things. I did work very hard though.
• I was a hard worker, and I always knew my lines.
• At boarding school you had to wear your name across your chest and your back, and obviously I had a pretty funny name. It wasn't Brown or Smith or Hughes.
• Blank House was exactly a nice empty sheet where nothing was accountable because you were so naughty that you were in Blank House.
• I didn't know what to do with myself. I wasn't excited by the teaching of the school. If they'd been intent on really teaching you things, I would have been a little more attentive.
• I got through my teen years by being a bit of a clown.
• I had a place in England and was commuting from England to Australia, which is pretty stupid, but after two years I sort of knew what I wanted to do, more or less.
• I had a quick ear and could pick up languages.
• I learnt the theory of movement, which I still teach sometimes. I was very, very ambitious to learn a skill.
• I never used to sleep much. I think we all go through a bit of a time like that where we rage about. If we don't, I don't think you've ever really lived.
• I was often very, incredibly naughty, and if I didn't come home at tea time I used to be sent to bed without any dinner. But people used to bring me things: I was better fed in bed.
• If there was a distraction I'd get up and jump out the window. I was quite out of hand. In schools like that I don't think they expect that girls are going to behave in such an outrageous fashion.
• Both my parents were doctors, and my mother had her surgery in the house. There were six children.
• The best part of learning any profession, when you're really going through those huge stretching escalated times of learning and energy, is when you want to do it so much.
• When I did Taming of the Shrew, I was very tired, and I decided to have a holiday and make a documentary.
• Very quickly, without really looking back or trying, I was just suddenly lifted into another sphere.
• The most surprising thing for my mother and father was when I was actually earning more money than them by the time I was about 18. They thought I was going to be the ne'er do well, who they'd have to keep worrying about.
• Once, the parental bed collapsed because all the children sat on it at once.
• My mother felt it was time that I had some parental control, so I went off to America and went to New York.
• My father said, If you want to do acting, you have to be successful, which is a silly thing to say.
• You never came home for lunch: you just stayed doing, playing, having fun, surfing, running round.
• It was a very odd household, because the grandmothers were so different. Both of them had their own pianos. So it would be duelling pianos by grandmothers.
• If you've got a lot of children, I think you let the other children bring them up more and you just sort of step in and do stuff like every now and again.
• Suddenly I had a contract and I was earning lots of money.