I was the only swimmer in movies. Tarzan was long gone, and he couldn't have done them anyway; he could never have gotten into my bathing suit.

I ended up buying a restaurant. Already we had invested in a gas station and a metal products plant.

Howard Hughes himself was a regular at the restaurant, and in a way it became his headquarters, too. Howard had recently relocated to Las Vegas, so when he wanted to do business in Los Angeles, he went into the back of our restaurant to use the telephone.

Even though I had a lucrative contract with MGM, I had a husband who was drinking and gambling our money away faster than I could make it.

The wisdom acquired with the passage of time is a useless gift unless you share it.

I never walked the streets of New York hoping to be a musical comedy star. For one thing, they would have thought I was too tall, because l was five feet eight and a half, and they were all little bitty things running around in the studio at that time.

Somehow I kept my head above water. I relied on the discipline, character, and strength that I had started to develop as that little girl in her first swimming pool.

By the time I got home at night, my eyes were so chlorinated I saw rings around every light.

Which Esther Williams do you want to hear about?

With two little boys in diapers, I had to keep it simple if I were going to have a life at all.

Marriage to Fernando offered shelter and security, but the shackle was the price I'd pay.

I was all in gold sequins for Million Dollar Mermaid, 50 feet in the air.

When you're out of sight for as long as I was, there's a funny feeling of betrayal that comes over people when they see you again.

I was 15, and the years of hard swimming had packed muscle on my frame and made me very strong. Not as strong as a football player, but strong enough to inflict heavy damage.

Critics established a snobbery toward me.

Once I married Fernando, I became invisible.

I always felt that if I made a movie, it would be one movie; I didn't see how they could make 26 swimming movies.

I took my daily swim at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool despite the presence of onlookers.

I took a job at the pool in order to earn the five cents a day it cost to swim. I counted wet towels. As a bonus, I was allowed to swim during lunchtime.

Everything about my teenage life was almost ideal.

The newspapers loved pinup pictures of pretty young swimmers, and as a national champion, I got more than my share of space in the sports pages.

Clark Gable was the first to have called me a mermaid.

Widowhood had done nothing to curb my smart mouth. So much for diplomacy.

I always took it for granted that there would be life after Hollywood.

There was a policy at Hughes against drinking at lunch, but the men ignored it.

Traveling to swimming meets took me beyond my small-town existence, gave me a hint of the exciting world outside of my own home.

It appeared as if I had invited the audience into the water with me, and it conveyed the sensation that being in there was absolutely delicious.

We can't all win Olympic medals. Even I never won one.

I gave my eardrums to MGM. And it's true: I really did.

My training in Science of Mind had begun with my mother. She took me to a different church every Sunday, and she encouraged me to question the minister afterward.

Three events. Three gold medals. I was news, big news, in the sports world.

I think it's so funny when people think they can't control a movie star. They can. We're just women, you know.

What the public expects and what is healthy for an individual are two very different things.

Life magazine ran a page featuring me and three other girls that was clearly the precursor of Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues.

I remember when I first walked into Mayer's cavernous office. You had to walk 50 yards to get to him, and in that time he could really study everything about you.

Victor Mature was a big man; he had a great swagger. I liked him and I knew we'd be good together on screen.

I was the only swimmer in movies. Tarzan was long gone, and he couldn't have done them anyway; he could never have gotten into my bathing suit.

We're gonna try and bring on all the different aspects of horror movie making and bring on guests and show all these old '50's B movies. Not the real corny ones, the real cool ones.

The thing is there have been American movies that are similar to Solaris, like Alien had a lot of things that are similar, although it's also got the horror element.

My mom took me to see Carnal Knowledge and The Wild Bunch and all these kind of movies when I was a kid.

Awards were made in Hollywood, in whatever the time it was created. They're to promote each other's movies. You give me an award, I give you an award and people will believe that we are great movies and they'll go to see them. It's still the same.

In a theater, the part is mine and I can control it as I want to. In the movies, I don't have direct contact, and I am fighting technical machinery.

I couldn't be happier about being a part of 'Hunger Games' and to play Katniss. I have a huge responsibility to the fans of this incredible book and I don't take it lightly. I will give everything I have to these movies and to this role to make it worthy of Suzanne Collins' masterpiece.

I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it's about the same proportion to books published that I care to read.

Sure, 'Twilight' is really huge right now and everybody's freaking out over it, but it will go away soon and I will be back to doing what I'm used to doing: weird little movies that nobody sees.

There are many kinds of movies in Hong Kong. Some are commercial and others are more artistic.

Making movies is eating candy. It's a very expensive candy, so you value when you can do it. So when you can do it twice at once, it's like, you know, a kid in a candy store!

It just proves good movies don't need 100 million dollars to be good.

In the past I've made movies that were pretty universally liked. You can't really hate them. You can discard them, but you can't really hate them.