Maude Adams
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"Maude Ewing Adams Kiskadden", known professionally as "Maude Adams", was an American actress who achieved her greatest success as the character Peter Pan, first playing the role in the 1905 Broadway theatre/Broadway production of Peter and Wendy/Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. Adams's personality appealed to a large audience and helped her become the most successful and highest-paid performer of her day, with a yearly income of more than one million dollars during her peak.

Adams began performing as a child while accompanying her actress mother on tour. At age 16, she made her Broadway debut, and under Charles Frohman's management, she became a popular player alongside leading man John Drew, Jr. in the early 1890s. Beginning in 1897, Adams starred in plays by J. M. Barrie, including The Little Minister, Quality Street (play)/Quality Street, What Every Woman Knows (play)/What Every Woman Knows and Peter Pan. These productions made Adams the most popular actress in New York. She also performed in various other plays. Her last Broadway play, in 1916, was Barrie's A Kiss for Cinderella. After a 13-year retirement, she appeared in more Shakespeare plays and then taught acting in Missouri. She finally retired to upstate New York.

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The delightful sense of importance that had been mine as a child actress was taken out of me. It seemed as if anyone could do better than I did. In every part I was worse than in the one before, and even my mother admitted that it would be a mercy if gestures could be dispensed with entirely.

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Don't be afraid of failure; be afraid of petty success.

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I've changed my mind about the interview. I shall never give interviews.

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Life is so fresh, life is every day so new if we are fighting, only for the best. Sometimes I think the only real satisfaction in life is failure, failure in your endeavor to do your best.

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Sometimes it seems that we are successful only because we have not tried hard enough for our best. We do the hard thing, and one day we succeed, and many things are made plain to us.

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I had not finished the first act before the quaint character of Peter Pan had charmed me. I could feel the presence of the Fairies and the Indians and the Pirates and the lost boys of Never-Never-Never Land.

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I love Salt Lake City, but I love you and the life of work before me still better.

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If I have smashed the traditions, it was because I knew no traditions.

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I had very little confidence in myself as an actress.

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