“I was not a classic mother. But my kids were never palmed off to boarding school. So, I didn’t bake cookies. You can buy cookies, but you can’t buy love.”

It’s necessary, at some point, to destroy your beauty.

You can’t fake listening. It shows.

For a woman to be considered a celebrated beauty is not exactly a bad thing. I think we have to say that in all reality.

We all have a childhood dream that when there is love, everything goes like silk, but the reality is that marriage requires a lot of compromise.

My body is the shape I live in and it shapes the way I live.

Just as you maintain your home, your car, your garden, you should look after your greatest gift: your body.

Myra Breckenridge is the antithesis of sex symbol. She’s revolutionary; she’s a warrior.

I think that women should be decorative.

I COULDN’T stand that my husband was being unfaithful. I am Raquel Welch – understand?

There aren’t any hard women, only soft men.

Being a sex symbol was rather like being a convict.

As far as I’ve been alive, women have always been more or less the symbol of sexuality rather than the male. We don’t see the naked male body, as the symbol of sex.

Latinos are here to stay. As citizen Raquel, I’m proud to be Latina.

Not everybody is comfortable with my ethnicity. When I first came along in the business, they didnt really like the idea of my name being Raquel.

I was always willing to take a great deal of the burden of getting along in life on my own shoulders, but I wasn’t willing to give myself a pat on the back. I was always looking to somebody else to give me that. .. That was all wrong.

You know what’s the sexiest thing of all? A little mystery.

The children despise their parents until the age of when they suddenly become just like them – thus preserving the system.

The biggest pieces of work that we do are vaccines, because those save lives, and also family planning. Because if a woman can space the births of her children, it changes everything for her health and her child’s health.

There must be a law against forcing children to perform at an early age. Children should have a wonderful childhood. They should not be given too much responsibility.

A mother has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.

The worst thing you can do to a child, and I’ve seen it happen so many times, is the silver spoon.

If any child of mine becomes an actor I will turn in my grave.

Pessimism is playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child’s play.

The global environment crisis is, as we say in Tennessee, real as rain, and I cannot stand the thought of leaving my children with a degraded earth and a diminished future.