The word actress has always seemed less a job description to me than a title.

I followed the same diet for 20 years, eliminating starches, living on salads, lean meat, and small portions.

I had been offered a Hollywood contract before my 18th birthday. It gave me the spark I needed.

I used to annoy my father by telling him how much I felt luck was with me.

I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.

When you have spent an important part of your life playing Let's Pretend, it's often easy to see symbolism where none exists.

I'm not sure I can explain the nature of Jack Kennedy's charm, but he took life just as it came.

Fonda and Gary Cooper had the best sense of timing of all the actors I knew.

I needed to be accepted, not humored. I intended to act.

I admire anyone who rids himself of an addiction.

Jealousy is, I think, the worst of all faults because it makes a victim of both parties.

I was going to live on my salary or go down swinging.

Eccentric behavior is not routinely noticed around a movie set.

The Hollywood structure was monopolistic, run by four or five big studios.

What a different world it was when I first sailed for Europe in 1930, with my mother, sister, and brother to spend six months abroad.

I am not the kind of woman who excuses her mistakes while reminding us of what used to be.

It was the fashion of the time, still is, to feel that all actors are neurotic, or they would not be actors.

I had no romantic interest in Gable. I considered him an older man.

I was fine when it came to cheering up others, not so fine with myself.

Everyone should see Hollywood once, I think, through the eyes of a teenage girl who has just passed a screen test.

I do not recall spending long hours in front of a mirror loving my reflection.

I knew I could not cope with the future unless I was able to rediscover the past.

Some women feel the best cure for a broken heart is a new beau.

Day after day, I spent long afternoons in the talent pool, being told how to walk, how to talk, how to sit.

When my mood was high, I seemed normal, even buoyant. I felt smarter. I had secrets. I could see God in a light bulb.

Trying to make order out of my life was like trying to pick up a jellyfish.

Children don't understand about people loving each other and then suddenly not.

The main cause of my difficulties stemmed from the tragedy of my daughter's unsound birth and my inability to face my feelings.

I used up every cent I earned as an actress.

For years it never occurred to me to question the judgment of those in charge at the studio.

We cannot calculate the numbers of people who left, fled or were fished out of Europe just ahead of the Holocaust.

Rehearsals and screening rooms are often unreliable because they can't provide the chemistry between an audience and what appears on the stage or screen.

Unlike the stage, I never found it helpful to be good in a bad movie.

Houses are one of my passions. I probably should have been an interior decorator.

I always tried to play my hunches.

The Howard Hughes I knew began to change after his plane crash in 1941.

Those who become mentally ill often have a history of chronic pain.

My departure from Hollywood was described as a walk-out. No one understood that I was cracking up.

I simply did not want my face to be my talent.

Wealth, beauty, and fame are transient. When those are gone, little is left except the need to be useful.

I was fortunate enough to work under directors who were, most of them, brilliant, emotional men.

I approached everything, my job, my family, my romances, with intensity.

I was plunged into what was known as the debutante social whirl. This was one of the ways fathers justified their own hard work and sacrifices.

My mother would not talk to me for weeks, would not stay under my roof for as long as I was married to Oleg.

I remember the 1940s as a time when we were united in a way known only to that generation. We belonged to a common cause-the war.

I have a role now that I think becomes me. I am a grandmother.

Men are wonderful. I adore them. They always give you the benefit of the doubt.

In later years, I craved foods that were almost always fattening.

I loved to eat. For all of Hollywood's rewards, I was hungry for most of those 20 years.