I knew that with a mouth like mine, I just hadda be a star or something.

Marlon Brando. The finest actor who ever lived. He was my idol when I was 13. He’s done enough work to last two lifetimes. Everything I do, I think: Can Brando play this with me?

I am simple, complex, generous, selfish, unattractive, beautiful, lazy, and driven.

Most awards, you know, they don’t give you unless you go and get them – did you know that? Terribly discouraging.

I don’t enjoy public performances and being up on a stage. I don’t enjoy the glamour. Like tonight, I am up on stage and my feet hurt.

I don’t care what you say about me. Just be sure to spell my name wrong.

They’re called “angels” because they’re in heaven until the reviews come out.

I wish I could be like Shaw who once read a bad review of one of his plays, called the critic and said: ‘I have your review in front of me and soon it will be behind me.’

My biggest nightmare is I’m driving home and get sick and go to hospital. I say: ‘Please help me.’ And the people say: ‘Hey, you look like…’ And I’m dying while they’re wondering whether I’m Barbra Streisand.

I’ve considered having my nose fixed. But I didn’t trust anyone enough. If I could do it myself with a mirror.

I just don’t want to be hampered by my own limitations.

I’m tired of malicious articles slandering me.

Success to me is having ten honeydew melons and eating only the top half of each slice.

I go by instinct – I don’t worry about experience.

We have a president who stole the presidency through family ties, arrogance and intimidation, employing Republican operatives to exercise the tactics of voter fraud by disenfranchising thousands of blacks, elderly Jews and other minorities.

Why am I so famous? What am I doing right? What are the others doing wrong?

Around people I don’t know, I’m totally at a loss.

What does it mean when people applaud? Should I give ’em money? Say thank you? Lift my dress? The lack of applause – that I can respond to.

I knew that with a mouth like mine, I just hadda be a star or something.

A man who graduated high in his class at Yale Law School and made partnership in a top law firm would be celebrated. A man who invested wisely would be admired, but a woman who accomplishes this is treated with suspicion.

The audience is the best judge of anything. They cannot be lied to. Truth brings them closer. A moment that lags – they’re gonna cough.

Why does a woman work ten years to change a man’s habits and then complain that he’s not the man she married?

I hated singing. I wanted to be an actress. But I don’t think I’d have made it any other way.

How I wish we lived in a time when laws were not necessary to safeguard us from discrimination.

What is exciting is not for one person to be stronger than the other… but for two people to have met their match and yet they are equally as stubborn, as obstinate, as passionate, as crazy as the other.

I’m not that ambitious any more. I just like my privacy. I wish I really wasn’t talked about at all.

Why is it men are permitted to be obsessed about their work, but women are only permitted to be obsessed about men?

You have got to discover you, what you do, and trust it.

I’ve been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good.

I was a personality before I became a person – I am simple, complex, generous, selfish, unattractive, beautiful, lazy and driven.

It is every woman’s dream to be some man’s dream woman.

Men are allowed to have passion and commitment for their work… a woman is allowed that feeling for a man, but not her work.

Myths are a waste of time. They prevent progression.

There is nothing more important in life than love.

To have ego means to believe in your own strength. And to also be open to other people’s views. It is to be open, not closed. So, yes, my ego is big, but it’s also very small in some areas. My ego is responsible for my doing what I do – bad or good.

I arrived in Hollywood without having my nose fixed, my teeth capped, or my name changed. That is very gratifying to me.

I find George Bush and Dick Cheney frightening, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft frightening.