A sure way to lose happiness, I found, is to want it at the expense of everything else.
Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.
An affair now and then is good for a marriage. It adds spice, stops it from getting boring… I ought to know.
Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.
Basically, I believe the world is a jungle, and if it’s not a bit of a jungle in the home, a child cannot possibly be fit to enter the outside world.
Brought up to respect the conventions, love had to end in marriage. I’m afraid it did.
Everybody has a heart. Except some people.
From the moment I was six I felt sexy. And let me tell you it was hell, sheer hell, waiting to do something about it.
Gay Liberation? I ain’t against it, it’s just that there’s nothing in it for me.
Good actors I’ve worked with all started out making faces in a mirror, and you keep making faces all your life.
Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism.
I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple devoured has seeds. It is endless.
I am just too much.
I do not regret one professional enemy I have made. Any actor who doesn’t dare to make an enemy should get out of the business.
I don’t take the movies seriously, and anyone who does is in for a headache.
I don’t think of myself as a character actress – that’s become a phrase which means you’ve had it.
I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don’t remember ever having seen one weep.
I never did pal around with actresses. Their talk usually bored me to tears.
I often think that a slightly exposed shoulder emerging from a long satin nightgown packs more sex than two naked bodies in bed.
I sent my flowers across the hall to Mrs Nixon but her husband remembered what a Democrat I am and sent them back.
I survived because I was tougher than anybody else.
I was never very interested in boys – and there were plenty of them – vying with one another to see how many famous women they would get into the hay.
I was the Marlon Brando of my generation.
I went back to work because someone had to pay for the groceries.
I will never be below the title.
I will not retire while I’ve still got my legs and my make-up box.
I work to stay alive.
I’d luv to kiss ya, but I just washed my hair.
I’d marry again if I found a man who had fifteen million dollars, would sign over half to me, and guarantee that he’d be dead within a year.
I’m the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.
I’ve always liked men better than women.
I’ve lost my faith in science.
If you’ve never been hated by your child, you’ve never been a parent.
In this business, until you’re known as a monster you’re not a star.
In this rat-race everybody’s guilty till proved innocent!
It is my last wish to be burried sitting up.
Life is a jest; and all things show it. I thought so once; but now I know it.
Locations are all tough, all miserable. I never left the sound stage for 18 years at Warners. We never went outside the studio, not even for big scenes.
Men become much more attractive when they start looking older. But it doesn’t do much for women, though we do have an advantage: make-up.
My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.
Oh, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We’ve already got the stars.
Old age is no place for sissies.
People often become actresses because of something they dislike about themselves: They pretend they are someone else.
Psychoanalysis. Almost went three times – almost. Then I decided what was peculiar about me was probably what made me successful. I’ve seen some very talented actors go into analysis and really lose it.
Sex is God’s joke on human beings.
Strong women only marry weak men.
That’s me: an old kazoo with some sparklers.
The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he’s dead.
The only reason anyone goes to Broadway is because they can’t get work in the movies.
There are new words now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains, the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch.
This has always been a motto of mine: Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.
To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.
To look back is to relax one’s vigil.
Today everyone is a star – they’re all billed as ‘starring’ or ‘also starring’. In my day, we earned that recognition.
Wave after wave of love flooded the stage and washed over me, the beginning of the one great durable romance of my life.
We movie stars all end up by ourselves. Who knows? Maybe we want to.
With the newspaper strike on, I wouldn’t consider dying.
Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation.
