never settle for someone else's definition of who we can be (4 October 2016)

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #119, 1983

When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.

- Susan Sarandon

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #96, 1981

You have to take away the idea that something you do is right or wrong. I don't think there's a right or a wrong; I think there's an "it works" or "it doesn't work" for the whole.

- Susan Sarandon

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still 58, 1980

Cindy Sherman, detail of Untitled #474, 2008


Now, as I move through my fifties, I can be professional and domestic, creative and intellectual, patient and urgent. I have learned that we should never settle for someone else's definition of who we can be. Growing to this age, I realize, is kind of like feeling your voice deepen. It's still your voice, but it has more substance, and it sounds like it knows its own origins.

- Susan Sarandon

Cindy Sherman, Untitled, installation view. 2010, MoMA

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #479. 1975

I look forward to being older, when what you look like becomes less and less an issue and what you are is the point.

- Susan Sarandon

Cindy Sherman at an opening in 2004