Art & Creativity Quote by Joan Collins

“Waiting around like a library book” is a deliciously cutting image because it makes the entertainment industry’s power structure feel both banal and humiliating: you’re shelved, cataloged, and only made “useful” when someone else decides to check you out. Joan Collins isn’t just describing career frustration; she’s skewering a system that treats actresses as inventory, not architects. The metaphor lands precisely because libraries are orderly, quiet, and rule-bound - the opposite of the myth Hollywood sells about glamour and agency. Collins punctures that myth with one well-placed simile.

The line’s intent is entrepreneurial, even faintly insurgent. Dynasty wasn’t merely a role; it was leverage. In the early 1980s, prime-time soaps were cultural engines, exporting American excess worldwide and minting icons. Collins, already a veteran of studio-era expectations and the post-studio scramble, understood that visibility at that scale could reset the terms: negotiating power, brand control, and narrative centrality. “Take charge” signals a shift from being chosen to choosing - from auditioning for approval to occupying a position that makes the phone ring.

The subtext is gendered and unsentimental. Collins is naming how aging is policed in an industry that fetishizes novelty, and how women are pushed into passivity once they’re no longer the default ingenue. Her wit keeps it from sounding like a grievance. It’s a declaration of strategy: if the gatekeepers want to file you away, become the book everyone fights to borrow.