"I have done A movies too, but I preferred doing B movies—if that’s what people want to call them, then so be it. Elvis Presley did B movies; Jack Nicholson did B movies,… So when I am referred to as ‘The Queen of the B Movies,’ I leave that to the person who reads it."

"... in those days, there were hardly any women who headlined movies. Men always had first billing, unless it was a Joan Crawford or Bette Davis movie. But I starred in most of my so-called B movies."

"They said I wasn’t the type for it, so they put a dark blonde wig on me. They wanted me to look like Grace Kelly with breasts."

"In films, she [Jayne Mansfield] played mostly character roles, while Marilyn did more sophisticated movies, and I did several rock 'n roll movies. The three of us were often compared, maybe because we had blonde hair, but all three of us were very different."

"You know, talking about Marilyn Monroe is strange. To me, she’s a person; to most people, she’s an idea."

"She [Marilyn Monroe] was so vulnerable to the world, but what a sweet person she really was, lovable, compassionate—I have nothing but grace for Marilyn, and she should have been at least nominated for an Academy Award for Bus Stop.. But in those days, they preferred to nominate the Bette Davis kind of stars."

"The studio didn’t really know how to groom a female star because they only had male stars ... they didn’t know what to do with a well-endowed blonde, except giving her dumb roles."

"Marilyn came along in the 1950s. She really opened the door for me. When I got my contract at Universal, I was their answer to Marilyn Monroe. They made my hair platinum, and they gave me a lot of sexy roles—dumb roles, actually."

"Sometimes I’m misunderstood and it’s hard to come by that. My life has been full of excitement. I’ve done pretty much what I wanted to do. I came from the Midwest, from South Dakota, and I came up the hard way. We lived on a farm; we didn’t even have electricity or running water if you know what I mean. People don’t know what that life is like."

"I’ve never acted my age and I never will. It’s just the way I’ve always been."

"The Cobweb was just plain weird, but I got to know and admire Miss Lillian Gish."

"I never cease to wonder at my luck in having for my sister the woman who, more than any other woman in America, possesses all the qualities of true greatness."

"For Lillian Gish, My Favorite Actress. On the occasion of her 1st visit to New York of which this book is a practical guide. From Her Chattel, F. Scott Fitzgerald"

"Lillian Gish is not only the best actress in her profession, but has the best mind of any woman I have ever met."

"According to director Lindsay Anderson, one day while filming The Whales of August he said to Lillian Gish, "Miss Gish, you have just given me a perfect close-up." Bette Davis remarked: "She should. She invented 'em.""

"Thalberg wanted commercial hits. I wanted art."

"I'm so glad I didn't ruin a man's life by marrying him."

"I never chose money, I always chose people. I wanted to be around people who knew more than I did. I think that’s why I never fell in love with an actor. They never seemed to know any more than I did. I wanted to be with writers… My idea of a dream man was Thornton Wilder."

"When I was in films, we pretended to kiss but we didn't. It was considered unsanitary. Now they swallow each others' tonsils. It's disgusting."

"If you're caught acting, nobody believes you."

"I don't feel I'm old. I just feel I'm me. And I've always been a happy person. I love the human race. I love my work. I love the world—I've been around it four times, you know. And I'm a believing person. I believe in God, even though I can't see him. You can't see the air in this room, right? But take it away and you're dead. And I believe there's something for us after we die. The world isn't wasteful. It keeps going on and I think we do too."

"You know, when I first went into the movies Lionel Barrymore played my grandfather. Later he played my father, and finally he played my husband. If he had lived I'm sure I would have played his mother. That's the way it is in Hollywood. The men get younger and the women get older."

"Broadway has been very good to me. But I've been very good to Broadway, too."

"The dying process begins the minute you are born, but it accelerates during dinner parties."

"Somebody once said to me if you want to be understood, don't write fiction."

"Dani said this woman, with whom she'd lived for two years, had never known her. "I feel like people accept the first thing I show them," she said, "and that's all I ever am to them.""

"Everybody wanted to be depressed. But your depression was supposed to be funny, too, and that was what had proved too much for Dolores."

"Of course there's something there; unfortunately, there's always something 'there.' Something you will one day be sorry you ever saw."

"My ambition was to live like music."

"She brightened. "Last week I ran a personal ad in the Guardian. I answered a few too. I'm not looking for sex; I feel too vulnerable for that. I just want somebody to hurt me and humiliate me.""

"Actors and actresses are overrated...Once just a few people knew about them. Then films started and we found ourselves canned like sardines and sent all over the world. It gave us an exaggerated idea of our importance. A scientist who saves thousands of lives is much more important. I wouldn't be twenty years old today for anything. Films aren't entertainments any more, they are realism. I come out of these films positively exhausted. I want to throw up."

"I'll be eighty this month. Age, if nothing else, entitles me to set the record straight before I dissolve. I've given my memoirs far more thought than any of my marriages. You can't divorce a book."

"Think what you've just said. All foods should be healthy. We ate meat without any of the things they inject in cows and chickens these days. Bread tasted like bread. Now everything is refined, teens are fat, people have heart attacks at 39. Does that make me nuts? [...] In the thirties I was told I had a tumor down there. I met with a surgeon who was puffy faced and sweating and his hands trembled. He said he wanted to cut through my rectum to get at the growth. I stood and shouted, "Physician, heal thyself!" and I simply fled. A pure bean sprouts diet cured me in months and the tumor shrank and disappeared. I rest my case."

"I wasn't used to children and they were getting on my nerves. Worse, it appeared that I was a child, too. I hadn't known that before; I thought I was just short."

"There is much to be said for post-menopausal celibacy. Sex is rough on loners because you have to have somebody else around, but now I don't. No more diets to stay slim and desirable: I've had sex and I've had food, and I'd rather eat."

"The joker in the deck of lesbian fidelity is female vanity: no woman of fifty is going to undress in front of a woman of twenty no matter how much she might lust for her."

"Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in."

"We wallow in nostalgia but manage to get it all wrong. True nostalgia is an ephemeral composition of disjointed memories [...] but American-style nostalgia is about as ephemeral as copyrighted déjà vu."

"Self-help books are making life downright unsafe. Women desperate to catch a man practice all the ploys recommended by these authors. Bump into him, trip over him, knock him down, spill something on him, scald him, but meet him."

"During the feminist seventies men were caught between a rock and a hard-on; in the fathering eighties they are caught between good hugs and bad hugs."

"Being a sex symbol has to do with an attitude, not looks. Most men think it's looks, most women know otherwise."

"Gratitude is riches. Complaint is poverty."

"I’ve been through everything. I always said I was like those round-bottomed circus dolls — you know, those dolls you could push down and they’d come back up? I’ve always been like that. I’ve always said, "No matter what happens, if I get pushed down, I’m going to come right back up.""

"The really frightening thing about middle age is the knowledge that you'll grow out of it."

"When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap."

"(What about short-story writers-who are your favorites?) LE: Lorrie Moore...It's so hard to be funny - that's the hardest thing, to be funny and also heartbreaking."

"Every songwriter in their smallest song seems to possess some monumental grief clarified and dignified by melody, Bill thinks. His own sadnesses, on the other hand, slosh about in his life in a low-key way, formless and self-consuming."

"Every arrangement in life carried with it the sadness, the sentimental shadow, of its not being something else, but only itself."

""The United States- how can you live in that country?" the man had asked. Agnes had shrugged. "A lot of my stuff is there," she'd said, and it was then that she first felt all the dark love and shame that came from the pure accident of home, the deep and arbitary place that happened to be yours."