“Playing our parts. Yes, we all have to do that and from childhood on, I have found that my own character has been much harder to play worthily and far harder at times to comprehend than any of the roles I have portrayed.”

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.

At 50, I thought proudly: Here we are, half century! Being 60 was fairly frightening. You want to know how I spent my 70th birthday? I put on a completely black face, a fuzzy black Afro wig, wore black clothes and hung a black wreath on my door.

Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night! – As Margo Channing in All About Eve

I work to stay alive.

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.

Success is built on disappointment, and disappointment is inherent in all success.

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

It’s true we don’t know what we’ve got until its gone, but we don’t know what we’ve been missing until it arrives. Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.

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.

The real actor – like any real artistj- has a direct line to the collective heart.

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. To look back is to relax one’s vigil.

I never said anything that was unprintable. Never said anything just for the sake of being startling.

I survived because I was tougher than anybody else.

Your luck is how you treat people.

Among the reasons marriages fail, sex ranks no higher than fourth, behind money, having only one bathroom, and an inability to communicate, reasons one, two and three.

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

The less you try to impress, the more impressive you are.

It doesn’t matter how cool you are if your heart is busted.

Apparently I’m introspective, levelheaded, but at the same time, absolutely insane.

It’s good to know that other people think differently, and that’s what makes the characters interesting.

Mean girls go far in high school. Kind women go far in LIFE.

Character is not something we inherit. Character is something we have to wake up and build.

Outrageous generosity is a character quality of people who win with money.

Character is not a product of circumstances, it’s the thing that survives it.