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Daily Inspiration Quote by Dick York

"I'm trying to go over my lines. I woke up on the floor, somebody had me in their arms. I didn't quite know who, people looked so unfamiliar. That's about all I remember"

About this Quote

It reads less like a backstage anecdote than a snapshot of the body refusing the script. Dick York frames the moment in the working actor's most familiar ritual - "trying to go over my lines" - then lets the sentence collapse into disorientation: waking on the floor, held by someone whose identity won't stick, faces turning "unfamiliar". The bluntness is the point. There's no melodrama, no grand lesson, just the eerie gap where continuity should be.

The subtext is about fragility inside a profession built on control. Actors are paid to hit marks, remember cues, project coherence. York is describing the opposite: a sudden failure of recall, the world reduced to a few hard images and the admission that memory stops there. That final phrase, "That's about all I remember", lands like a curtain drop - not because it's poetic, but because it's terrifyingly ordinary. It suggests how quickly a person can become a stranger to his own surroundings, and how little narrative authority he has over it.

Context matters: York is closely associated with TV's Bewitched, and his real life was marked by serious health issues that ultimately altered his career. Read through that lens, the quote becomes an unvarnished account of a medical crisis intersecting with professional obligation. Even without the diagnosis on the page, you can feel the cultural pressure underneath: keep working, keep performing, until the body stages its own intervention.

Quote Details

TopicMental Health
SourceHelp us find the source
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
York, Dick. (2026, January 15). I'm trying to go over my lines. I woke up on the floor, somebody had me in their arms. I didn't quite know who, people looked so unfamiliar. That's about all I remember. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/im-trying-to-go-over-my-lines-i-woke-up-on-the-140829/

Chicago Style
York, Dick. "I'm trying to go over my lines. I woke up on the floor, somebody had me in their arms. I didn't quite know who, people looked so unfamiliar. That's about all I remember." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/im-trying-to-go-over-my-lines-i-woke-up-on-the-140829/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I'm trying to go over my lines. I woke up on the floor, somebody had me in their arms. I didn't quite know who, people looked so unfamiliar. That's about all I remember." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/im-trying-to-go-over-my-lines-i-woke-up-on-the-140829/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

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Dick York (September 4, 1928 - February 20, 1992) was a Actor from USA.

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