Great Throughts Treasury

"The act of sex, gratifying as it may be, is God’s joke on humanity. It is man’s last desperate stand at superintendency."

"Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work."

"The person who wants to make it has to sweat. There are no short cuts. And you've got to have the guts to be hated."

"A sure way to lose happiness, I found, is to want it at the expense of everything else."

"An affair now and then is good for a marriage. It adds spice, stops it from getting boring.... I ought to know."

"Being called very, very difficult is the beginning of success. Until you've been called very, very difficult you're really nobody at all."

"Brought up to respect the conventions, love had to end in marriage. I'm afraid it did."

"Conventions, love had to end in marriage. I'm afraid it did."

"Discipline is a symbol of caring to a child. He needs guidance. If there is love, there is no such thing as being too tough with a child. A parent must also not be afraid to hang himself. If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent."

"Don't get up. And please stop acting as if I were the queen mother!"

"Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose."

"Everybody has a heart. Except some people."

"Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night."

"At fifty, I thought proudly: Here we are, half century! Being sixty was fairly frightening. You want to know how I spent my seventieth birthday? I put on a completely black face, a fuzzy black Afro wig, wore black clothes and hung a black wreath on my door."

"Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life."

"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."

"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."

"Getting old is not for sissies."

"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 don't take the movies seriously, and anyone who does is in for a headache."

"I have always been driven by some distant music-a battle hymn no doubt-for I have been at war from the beginning. I've never looked back before. I've never had the time and it has always seemed so dangerous."

"I have been uncompromising, peppery, intractable, monomaniacal, tactless, volatile, and oftentimes disagreeable.... I suppose I'm larger than life."

"I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don't remember ever having seen one weep."

"I love my profession. I would never stop. Relax? I relax when I work. It's my life."

"I never did pal around with actresses. Their talk usually bored me to tears."

"I don't think of myself as a character actress - that's become a phrase which means you've had it."

"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 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 think I'll have a large order of prognosis negative."

"I think Mr. Reagan has done very well under very difficult circumstances. He's had terrific problems physically and he's managed them very well. But my God, the witch-hunt today! Is there any human being alive who hasn't done something bad in their youth - like maybe smoke marijuana once? And this man (Judge Ginsburg) found it necessary to admit it! My God! It would be like Mr. Jack Kennedy sitting down and listing all the women (he knew) before he got in."

"I wanted to be the first to win three Oscars, but Miss Hepburn has done it. Actually it hasn't been done. Miss Hepburn only won half an Oscar. If they'd given me half an Oscar I would have thrown it back in their faces. You see, I'm an Aries. I never lose."

"I was never beautiful like Miss Hayworth or Miss Lamarr. I was known as the little brown wren. Who'd want to get me at the end of the picture?"

"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 never wished I’d been a man. I always felt like a woman and wanted to be a woman. I wanted to be fulfilled professionally and personally, as a woman. There are some who might say I had penis envy, but I only had penis admiration."

"I often think that a slightly exposed shoulder emerging from a long satin nightgown packs more sex than two naked bodies in bed."

"I was thought to be 'stuck up.' I wasn't. I was just sure of myself. This is and always has been an unforgivable quality to the unsure."

"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 would advise any woman against having an affair with a married man believing he will ever leave his wife, no matter how often he says his wife does not understand him. Love is not as necessary to a man's happiness as it is to a woman's. If her marriage is satisfactory, a woman will seldom stray. A man can be totally contented and still be out howling at the moon."

"I would take a bad script and a good director any day against a good script and a bad director."

"I wouldn't worry too much about your heart. You can always put that award where your heart ought to be."

"I'd luv to kiss ya, but I just washed my hair."