Louise Brooks

"I have a gift for enraging people, but if I ever bore you it will be with a knife."

"I have been taking stock of my 50 years since I left Wichita. How I have existed fills me with horror for I failed in everything. Spelling, arithmetic, writing, swimming, tennis, golf, dancing, singing, acting, wife, mistress, whore, friend, even cooking. And I do not excuse myself with the usual escape of not trying. I tried with all my heart."

"I never gave away anything without wishing I had kept it; nor kept it without wishing I had given it away."

"We were Midwesterners born in the Bible Belt of Anglo-Saxon farmers, who prayed in the parlor and practised incest in the barn."

"The rest of the girls wore smiles as fixed as their towering feather headdresses. I decided right then that onstage I would never smile unless I felt like it."

"Most beautiful dumb girls think they are smart and get away with it, because other people, on the whole, aren't much smarter."

"I was simply playing myself, which is the hardest thing in the world to do – if you know that it’s hard. I didn’t, so it seemed easy."

"A well-dressed woman, even if her purse is painfully empty, can conquer the world."

"I was navigating, but not seeing."