“Never get involved with someone who wants to change you”

The young always have the same problem – how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.

The world now seems a stunningly ignoble place. It has not really grown all that much worse but appears to have done so because we know so much more about it than we did.

Flowers are words even a baby can understand.

Manners are love in a cool climate.

I have to realise that as I am only English and am allowed to live in America, I have to give something in return. And since I cannot build a hospital, or endow a university, I can only give my infinite availability.

The worst part of being gay in the twentieth century is all that damn disco music to which one has to listen.

If Mr. Vincent Price were to be co-starred with Miss Bette Davis in a story by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe directed by Mr. Roger Corman, it could not fully express the pent-up violence and depravity of a single day in the life of the average family.

A fair share of anything is starvation diet to an egomaniac.

In England, the system is benign and the people are hostile. In America, the people are friendlyand the system is brutal!

Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.

The British do not expect happiness. I had the impression, all the time that I lived there, that they do not want to be happy; they want to be right.

I never understood music. It seemed to me to be the maximum amount of noise conveying the minimum amount of information.

As we all know from witnessing the consuming jealousy of husbands who are never faithful, people do not confine themselves to the emotions to which they are entitled.

Happiness is the only thing I understand.

When I was young, we thought that Oscar Wilde was a great nobleman who had thrown his life away for love. Nothing could be less true. He slept with East Enders who were procured for him by Lord Alfred Douglas.

Love is the extra effort we make in our dealings with those whom we do not like and once you understand that, you understand all. This idea that love overtakes you is nonsense. This is but a polite manifestation of sex. To love another you have to undertake some fragment of their destiny.

If you wait, all that happens is that you get older.

Also, when you get made fun of-when people point out your weaknesses, it’s an opportunity for you to rise above.

From day one, I got addicted to being on stage and getting the applause and laughter.

I’m definitely not getting married. In this business, you’re either getting married or they want you to be pregnant. I’m not getting married until I’m forty. If ever.

I’m not getting married until I’m forty. If ever.

Ability is the art of getting credit for all the home runs somebody else hits.

We want to get people laughing; we don’t want to offend anybody.

The one you actually get to do when you’re filming, and then the one you wish you would have done, afterward.