I sent my flowers across the hall to Mrs Nixon but her husband remembered what a Democrat I am and sent them back.

Wave after wave of love flooded the stage and washed over me, the beginning of the one great durable romance of my life.

With the newspaper strike on, I wouldn’t consider dying.

Old age is no place for sissies.

I was the Marlon Brando of my generation.

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.

Everybody has a heart. Except some people.

I went back to work because someone had to pay for the groceries.

People often become actresses because of something they dislike about themselves: They pretend they are someone else.

My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.

To look back is to relax one’s vigil.

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.

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

Sex is God’s joke on human beings.

Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism.

Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone-but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.

Good actors I’ve worked with all started out making faces in a mirror, and you keep making faces all your life.

When a man gives his opinion he’s a man. When a woman gives her opinion she’s a bitch.

I will not retire while I’ve still got my legs and my make-up box.

That’s me: an old kazoo with some sparklers.

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

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.

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.

In this rat-race everybody’s guilty till proved innocent!

Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it’s because I’m not a bitch. Maybe that’s why Miss Crawford always plays ladies.

Oh, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We’ve already got the stars.

We movie stars all end up by ourselves. Who knows? Maybe we want to.

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.

This has always been a motto of mine: Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.

I sent my flowers across the hall to Mrs Nixon but her husband remembered what a Democrat I am and sent them back.

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

I’ve always liked men better than women.

Life is a jest; and all things show it. I thought so once; but now I know it.

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

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

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

I will never be below the title.

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

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.

Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.

In this business, until you’re known as a monster you’re not a star.

Gay Liberation? I ain’t against it, it’s just that there’s nothing in it for me.

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.

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.

I’ve lost my faith in science.

I work to stay alive.

The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

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

The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he’s dead.

I am just too much.

Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation.

Strong women only marry weak men.

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

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 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.

The only reason anyone goes to Broadway is because they can’t get work in the movies.

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

Today everyone is a star – they’re all billed as ‘starring’ or ‘also starring’. In my day, we earned that recognition.

I’m the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.

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.

It is my last wish to be burried sitting up.

If you’ve never been hated by your child, you’ve never been a parent.

I survived because I was tougher than anybody else.