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

"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."

"I don't think of myself as a character actress - that's become a phrase which means you've had it."

"I've lost my faith in science."

"To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy."

"People often become actresses because of something they dislike about themselves: They pretend they are someone else."

"There are new words now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains, the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch."

"Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism."

"I will never be below the title."

"With the newspaper strike on, I wouldn't consider dying."

"The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"

"Oh, don't let's ask for the moon. We've already got the stars."

"That's me: an old kazoo with some sparklers."

"Everybody has a heart. Except some people."

"To look back is to relax one's vigil."

"I've always liked men better than women."

"I will not retire while I've still got my legs and my make-up box."

"I went back to work because someone had to pay for the groceries."

"An affair now and then is good for a marriage. It adds spice, stops it from getting boring... I ought to know."

"A sure way to lose happiness, I found, is to want it at the expense of everything else."

"Psychoanalysis. Almost went three times - almost. Then I decided what was peculiar about me was probably what made me successful. I've seen some very talented actors go into analysis and really lose it."

"I do not regret one professional enemy I have made. Any actor who doesn't dare to make an enemy should get out of the business."

"Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life."

"From the moment I was six I felt sexy. And let me tell you it was hell, sheer hell, waiting to do something about it."

"Basically, I believe the world is a jungle, and if it's not a bit of a jungle in the home, a child cannot possibly be fit to enter the outside world."

"Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work."

"Sex is God's joke on human beings."

"Gay Liberation? I ain't against it, it's just that there's nothing in it for me."

"Wave after wave of love flooded the stage and washed over me, the beginning of the one great durable romance of my life."

"I often think that a slightly exposed shoulder emerging from a long satin nightgown packs more sex than two naked bodies in bed."

"Today everyone is a star - they're all billed as 'starring' or 'also starring'. In my day, we earned that recognition."

"When a man gives his opinion he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion she's a bitch."

"Good actors I've worked with all started out making faces in a mirror, and you keep making faces all your life."

"Locations are all tough, all miserable. I never left the sound stage for 18 years at Warners. We never went outside the studio, not even for big scenes."

"My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose."

"Old age is no place for sissies."

"I sent my flowers across the hall to Mrs Nixon but her husband remembered what a Democrat I am and sent them back."

"This has always been a motto of mine: Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work."

"The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he's dead."

"In this business, until you're known as a monster you're not a star."

"I'd luv to kiss ya, but I just washed my hair."

"I don't take the movies seriously, and anyone who does is in for a headache."

"Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation."

"I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple devoured has seeds. It is endless."

"I'd marry again if I found a man who had fifteen million dollars, would sign over half to me, and guarantee that he'd be dead within a year."

"Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it's because I'm not a bitch. Maybe that's why Miss Crawford always plays ladies."

"Brought up to respect the conventions, love had to end in marriage. I'm afraid it did."

"I work to stay alive."

"I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don't remember ever having seen one weep."

"Life is a jest; and all things show it. I thought so once; but now I know it."