“If I’m such a legend, then why am I so lonely? If I’m such a legend, then why do I sit at home for hours staring at the damned telephone, hoping it’s out of order, even calling the operator asking her if she’s sure it’s not out of order?”

If I am a legend, then why am I so lonely?

I was born in a lovely white house with a garden.

I try to bring the audience’s own drama – tears and laughter they know about – to them.

To let a fool kiss you is bad. To let a kiss fool you is worse. ‘Twas not my lips you kissed but my soul.

We cast away priceless time in dreams, born of imagination, fed upon illusion, and put to death by reality.

I can live without money, but I cannot live without love.

I was born at the age of twelve on an MGM lot.

I’ve always taken ‘The Wizard of Oz’ very seriously, you know. I believe in the idea of the rainbow. And I’ve spent my entire life trying to get over it.

Give the people what they want and then go have a hamburger.

When I die I have visions of fags singing ‘Over the Rainbow’ and the flag at Fire Island being flown at half mast.

People en masse have always been wonderful to me. I truly have a great love for an audience. I want to give them two hours of just pow.

Audiences have kept me alive.

When you have lived the life I’ve lived, when you’ve loved and suffered, and been madly happy and desperately sad — well, that’s when you realize you’ll never be able to set it all down. Maybe you’d rather die first.

Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.

The greatest treasures are those invisible to the eye but found by the heart.

You are never so alone as when you are ill on stage. The most nightmarish feeling in the world is suddenly to feel like throwing up in front of four thousand people.

Christmas at my house is always at least six or seven times more pleasant than anywhere else. We start drinking early. And while everyone else is seeing only one Santa Claus, we’ll be seeing six or seven.

The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.

I never learned hate at home, or shame. I had to go to school for that.

Modern candidates seem to have to live with political matters all the time. In my father’s time, a politician’s home was still his castle.

So many people come to church with a genuine desire to hear what we have to say, yet they are always going back home with the uncomfortable feeling that we are making it too difficult for them to come to Jesus.

Ah, the patter of little feet around the house. There’s nothing like having a midget for a butler.

If you think you are enlightened; go home for Thanksgiving.

Home was a place to be only when all other places were closed.