missavagardner:

Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor aka Elizabeth Taylor | February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011 

I have often have wondered what kind of a person I would be today if I did not have these enormous guilts — if everything had gone easily and I had not made such horrific mistakes. I think I would have been the most awful, pontifical goody two shoes. I was really so smug, so sweet, so good, so spoiled — so intolerant of anybody else’s downfall. But tragedy, mistakes, and shame for your mistakes cannot leave you untouched. All the superficial things that one gave so much value to before — money, luxury, indulging in whims — calamity makes them seem so incidental. I swear to God I’d be just as happy living with Richard and the kids in a shack. And I treat the happiness I have now with great respect, great appreciation, because I know how fragile and precarious it is — how easily it can go.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELIZABETH!