I have three phobias which, could I mute them, would make my life

“I have three phobias which, could I mute them, would make my life as slick as a sonnet, but as dull as ditch water: I hate to go to bed, I hate to get up, and I hate to be alone.” — thus spoke Tallulah Bankhead, the dazzling spirit of the stage, the tempest of an age when glamour and rebellion danced hand in hand. Her words shimmer with wit, but beneath their sparkle lies a confession of the human soul — a restless, unquiet truth. In her voice we hear the eternal ache of those who live fiercely, who burn too brightly to find rest. She mocks her own contradictions, yet in that irony she unveils a timeless insight: that life’s fire often springs from its discontent, and that peace without passion is but a dull, gray calm.

Born in the early twentieth century, Tallulah Bankhead was a creature of the theater — bold, scandalous, magnificent. She lived her life as though it were a grand performance, full of brilliance and danger. To her, the idea of a “slick sonnet” — a perfect, polished life — was abhorrent. For such perfection, she believed, would come at the cost of vitality. Her phobias — the hatred of sleep, of waking, of solitude — were not mere quirks but symbols of her struggle against the monotony of existence. To hate to go to bed is to resist surrender; to hate to get up is to rebel against routine; and to hate to be alone is to fear the echoing silence of one’s own soul. In those three refusals, she declared herself fully, gloriously human.

What Bankhead reveals is the paradox of the passionate life: it is filled with contradictions that give it color. Those who live with intensity are forever caught between longing and exhaustion, between loneliness and love, between craving stillness and fearing it. To them, dullness is the only true death. And yet, this restlessness — this inability to be still — is both gift and curse. It drives them to create, to feel, to seek beauty endlessly; but it also denies them peace. Such souls are like flames in the wind, brilliant but fleeting, alive in every breath and haunted by every silence.

In this, Bankhead joins the company of many restless spirits before her. Lord Byron, the poet of storm and fire, could never rest; his passion drove him from one adventure to another, until it consumed him. Vincent van Gogh, haunted by solitude, painted the agony and glory of his own mind, finding in color what he could not find in peace. Like them, Bankhead feared the stillness where the self confronts itself. Yet she also knew that to extinguish that restlessness would be to lose the pulse of her art. As she said, life might become “as slick as a sonnet” — perfectly composed, but lifeless. And indeed, what is a flawless sonnet if it does not bleed with feeling?

Her wit hides a deeper wisdom: that discomfort is the mother of creation. The hatred of sleep, of routine, of solitude — these are but the cries of a heart that refuses to be tamed. And yet, we must tread carefully, for ungoverned passion burns all it touches. To live as Bankhead did is to court both splendor and sorrow. The ancients taught moderation as the path to wisdom, but they also knew that heroes are not born from calm waters. Achilles, in his restless glory, chose a short life filled with honor over a long life of peace. Tallulah, in her own way, made the same choice — to live vividly, imperfectly, defiantly alive.

Yet there is a lesson for us all in her confession. We must not scorn our restlessness, nor must we let it devour us. To hate to be alone is to reveal how deeply we crave connection; to hate to sleep is to show how fiercely we fear the end of our story; to hate to rise is to reveal how heavy the heart can be when life demands courage anew each dawn. These are not weaknesses but reminders of our humanness — of the eternal struggle between our longing for peace and our hunger for meaning.

Lesson: Do not seek a life that is merely “slick as a sonnet,” for perfection without spirit is emptiness. Embrace your contradictions; they are the pulse of your being. When you feel restless, know that it is the mark of a soul alive. Yet learn also to pause — to face the silence without fleeing it, to rest without surrendering your fire. Cultivate balance, not blandness. Love your wildness, but do not let it consume your peace. For the truest life is neither calm nor chaos, but the dance between the two — where passion and wisdom meet, and the soul learns to live with both its music and its quiet.

Thus Tallulah’s laughter still echoes across time — not as vanity, but as a hymn to the restless heart. She teaches us that to live is to wrestle with both joy and dread, to find beauty even in our unrest. And though her words wear the costume of wit, their truth is eternal: that a life without struggle may be smooth, but never alive.