“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.”

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.

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.

In the silence of night I have often wished for just a few words of love from one man, rather than the applause of thousands of people.

Death is less bitter punishment than death’s delay.

But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.

We’d been apart so long-I’d been dead so long, she said in English. I thought surely you’d built a new life, with no room in it for me. I’d hoped that.

I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason toward my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.

I never go to funerals. To me a person is dead when he breathes for the last time. After that, your memories should be personal.

Vitally, the human race is dying. It is like a great uprooted tree, with its roots in the air. We must plant ourselves again in the universe.

Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.