Art & Creativity Quote by Joan Collins

There is a quiet, almost rueful sleight-of-hand in Joan Collins admitting she "used to write novels and little stories" and then shrugging them off as something she "put... away" once acting arrived at 17. The line lands like a confession disguised as practicality: the youthful self with private ambitions gets archived the moment a public identity demands full occupancy. "Little stories and compositions" is deliberately diminutive, a way of making the earlier desire sound harmless, even quaint, so the sacrifice feels inevitable rather than chosen.

The subtext is about timing and the tyranny of momentum. Starting to act at 17 isn’t just a biographical detail; it’s a cultural pressure point. For women, especially in mid-century entertainment, the clock wasn’t a metaphor. Youth was currency, and the industry rewarded total commitment. "So there wasn't much time" reads as an understatement that does double duty: it excuses the abandoned writing without inviting pity, and it hints at how a career can crowd out other selves before you’ve even met them.

It also works because Collins refuses the modern redemption arc. She doesn’t claim she "followed her true calling" or "found her voice". Instead, she frames creativity as plural and contingent: one art form didn’t naturally eclipse the other; logistics and opportunity did. The sentence has the briskness of someone who has spent decades being packaged as a persona, letting a more interior life flicker into view for just long enough to remind you it existed.