Top 40 Phyllis Smith Quotes

When I was little, my mom would dress me up and take me downtown on the Carondelet bus, which in itself was exciting. We would go to see Santa Claus at Famous-Barr. The decorations were so pretty. The line was long, but that just gave me more time to enjoy Santa’s Toyland. I loved every minute of it.

Listen, if there’s anything we need more of in this world, it’s something that has a better ending or is more positive.

Even before ‘The OA,’ I was a very spiritual person.

When I hurt my knee, I knew it was time to retire from dancing, and I needed a job just to pay the bills, and I ended up as a receptionist for about three-four years.

If I wasn’t going to be able to dance professionally, I wasn’t going to dance. That’s my all-or nothing personality coming out.

One day, I was taken into a room with 25 animators, all working on Sadness. They asked me a lot of questions, and they got something of the way I move into the character.

I did ballet, tap, jazz, modern, I taught dance here in my hometown of St. Louis.

For me, I want to find the truth in the word and the character and the line.

When we were doing ‘The Office,’ there was an area backstage where they worked on hair and makeup, and I was sitting there waiting to get ready to go on, and one of the writers went, ‘I want you to audition for ‘Bad Teacher.” I went, ‘Okay!’

Just go for it. Don’t be afraid of trying new things. You have absolutely no idea what’s going to present itself to you. Don’t be frightened. Just buckle down and do whatever your heart desires.

Generally, I’m not sad. I mean, everyone has sad moments.

I’ve had an experience that… I don’t know the right label to put to it, if it was an angel or Jesus or what. Nobody knows anything for sure about that, but I know that I had an encounter, and I know that things exist beyond this realm, most definitely. I’m grounded in that.

Everybody wants to shine a little bit, even a wallflower.

Life is not all a bowl of cherries. There are days when you aren’t going to feel up to par. And it’s healthy to see it in yourself and to ask, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’

I know how difficult it is to get one job, much less an entirely new career. I’m very blessed and grateful. It’s like I’m a normal person with an extraordinary journey.

Hopefully, ‘Inside Out’ will have the longevity that those older movies have, and many years down the line, people will be able to watch it and find some kinship with it.

I just wanted Sadness to be true, to come from a real place. I tried to work from the inside out, going from my gut all the time. I didn’t over-analyze it. I just did it.

When I was in casting, we would bring somebody in, have them read their lines, maybe give them a few pointers, and hire them, and then once they go to the set and you have a director who’s directing them, that performance may not be anywhere near what you had in the audition, either good or bad.

I’m not accomplished enough to over-analyze something, because I don’t have the background as far as people who write and know how to break down a character or story and stuff. I mostly go by gut instincts.

I used to watch, on television on Sunday nights, they had the Disney hour then and the castle coming up and ‘When you wish upon a star… ‘ That was my very first Disney memory.

If you look at the character of Sadness, they really nailed my eyebrows.

We’re not whole people if we’re just one emotion. On any given day, you can be happy, sad, angry, and so on… As you mature, you just learn to deal with each one of those emotions.

I had one young man tell me he wished I was his mom. Another young woman told me that every time she watched ‘The Office,’ I reminded her of her mother, who had just passed away a year ago, and that every time she saw me she felt as if she had a piece of her mom still with her.

I know I’m not supposed to talk about God and stuff, but my spiritual life is very strong, and I really feel that a big part of whatever success I’m having is due to that as well.

I’m just a normal person, believe me.

I find myself dancing in the grocery store.

I wish I had paid more attention in my psych class in college. I would’ve had a broader vocabulary to draw from.

Everybody involved in Pixar, I’ve not met one person who’s not incredibly creative and nice and lovely and know what they’re doing.

I believe in angels.

One of the first places I was ever recognized after ‘The Office’ came out was at Target in Los Angeles. Someone came up to me, and she said, ‘Are you Phyllis from ‘The Office?” We were in different aisles, but she had recognized my voice.

I have said in many interviews that God had a better plan for me than I ever anticipated. I still firmly believe that, and I am grateful for a prayer answered.

I’ve just tried to be a responsible person and pay my bills. But whatever it is I do, I want to do the best I can.

To be in a Pixar movie is just great to begin with, and it has afforded me the opportunity to do a different medium because I have never done voice-over before. And I love it.

We are made up of multiple emotions. And it would be unnatural to completely eliminate even one or two or three of those. It’s impossible. You’d become a robot if the emotions weren’t there.

We all have these emotions, but you never really want to own up to sadness. You want to bury it.

I know how difficult it is for actors to get work, because I did casting for all those years.

I do like comedy and drama.

I didn’t want Sadness to be just one note.

I don’t really think about being pigeonholed so much.

I feel like I’m an ordinary person, but I’ve had extraordinary opportunities in my later life, and I never saw any of it coming. I never saw ‘The Office’ coming, I never saw ‘Inside Out’ coming, and I just feel grateful and thankful to have these opportunities and to have an actual real enthusiasm in my life.