“Egotism – usually just a case of mistaken nonentity.”

[On Marilyn Monroe:] Her body has gone to her head.

The more you kick something that’s dead, the worse it smells.

Eyes are the greatest tool in film. Mr. Capra taught me that. Sure it’s nice to say very good dialogue, if you can get it. But great movie acting – watch the eyes!

The boy’s got a lot to learn and I’ve got a lot to teach.

I couldn’t remember my name for weeks. I’d be at the theater and hear them calling ‘Miss Stanwyck, Miss Stanwyck,’ and I’d think ‘Where is that dame? Why doesn’t she answer? By crickie, it’s me!

Attention embarrasses me. I don’t like to be on display.

Put me in the last fifteen minutes of a picture and I don’t care what happened before. I don’t even care if I was IN the rest of the damned thing – I’ll take it in those fifteen minutes.

My only problem is finding a way to play my fortieth fallen female in a different way from my thirty-ninth.

It’s perhaps not the future I would choose. I still think it’s possible to make a success of both marriage and career even though I didn’t. But it’s not a bad future. And I’m not afraid of it.

There is a point in portraying surface vulgarity where tragedy and comedy are very close.

[On a dull party:] It was a fête worse than death.

I’m a tough old broad from Brooklyn. Don’t try to make me into something I’m not. If you want someone to tiptoe down the Barkley staircase in crinoline and politely ask where the cattle went, get another girl.

I’m now the Lord of the Brighton Manor.

Just be truthful – and if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

Sponsors obviously care more about a ninety-second commercial and want to pay you more than any guest star gets for a ninety-minute acting performance.

I’m a tough old broad from Brooklyn. I intend to go on acting until I’m ninety, and they won’t need to paste my face with make-up.

Who knows, maybe this whole planet is an asylum, a penal realm. A place for hard cases.

The American war is over, but this is far from being the case with the American Revolution.

I know of no case in which you are to have a judicial proceeding, by which a man is to be deprived of any part of his property, without his having an opportunity of being heard.

The more you practice, the better. But in any case, practice more than you play.

Actually, he gave false evidence [of chemical weapons]. In this case,[John] Kerry didn’t even present any evidence. He talked “we have evidence” and he didn’t present anything. Not yet, nothing so far ; not a single shred of evidence.

It is not impossible to suppose that in this case our luminary was taken in the act.

I am bound to tell what I am told, but not in every case to believe it.

Read about your case of amnesia. Must be a new brand.