If you can handle a nightclub audience successfully, you can handle anything.

I was bargaining for time away from Hollywood, and Columbia was bargaining for money. I got what I wanted and they got what they wanted. They knew I was so anxious to do Born Yesterday that I'd have done it for a dollar. They gave me the next best thing.

I'm a born and bred New Yorker. I belong here. Everytime I leave it's like losing a leg.

I am not a member of any organization listed by the Attorney General as subversive. In any instance where I lent my name in the past, it was certainly without knowledge that such an organization was subversive. I have always been essentially and foremost an American.

Lovers have a right to betray you... friends don't.

It meant as much to me as winning the Oscar.

He didn't maintain my illusion of myself, he gave me an illusion of myself. Before I met him, I never thought of myself as an actress. Boy, he sidetracked me in a great way!

I think Billie is the kind of girl who would let her hips swing loose.

If you can handle a nightclub audience successfully, you can handle anything.

I've always loved words. I ate up all the books I could get my hands on, and when I couldn't get books, I read candy wrappers and labels on cereal and toothpaste boxes.

Nobody can give a good performance unless the authors and composers have written a good part, a fact which is often overlooked.

Acting is a very limited form of expression and those who take it seriously are very limited people. I take it seriously.

I hated the whole idea of being an actress. I used to throw up before every performance and cry afterward.

When they thought of me, they always remembered the vacuous Billie Dawn. It was as simple as that.

They weren't interested in entertainment. They were tough. I learned one trick, which was to be quieter than they were until they had to look at you. It took a lot of agressiveness.

I want a part where I can use my own hair, my own voice, and maybe even be literate.

You have to be smart to play a dumb blonde over and over again and keep the audience's attention without extraordinary physical equipment.

Of course I work hard. Why shouldn't I? Who am I to think I should get things the easy way?

People have a hard time making me dress up to look like a classy gal.

I'm trying to eliminate every vestige of my own personality, style, approach and get into somebody else's skin. Sometimes I feel I've accomplished it. But when I don't, I'm nobody at all, having left myself at home.

We were wavering around like a ship without a sail.

The only actress they didn't test was Garbo. Must have been her accent.

I get very nervous whenever I think about it. I've never done a serious play, and I have such awe of the woman - she's really my only idol. It's going to be a big stretch - certain people come out on stage and your face muscles automatically tense and you get ready to smile.

I could talk about him all day. He's one of the most wonderful things that ever happened to me.

Now with all this movie business, everybody's coming around wanting to know everything that's happened since I was four. It's like going to an analyst.

It's tough when take 1 is technically okay and take 2 has better acting. Out here (Hollywood) they print the first one. That's the one where we all hit the mark on the floor and who cares about the acting.

I am not an 'instant' actor... to really do anything, I've got to try it five or six or a dozen times.

I suppose that if I could have quit, I would have, because in those days I never wanted to be an actress, the acting was something to do while I waited for a chance to study writing and directing. But I guess I was just meant to be an actress. Because, here I am.

We gained a great deal of prestige, but not much money. We liked to work so much we couldn't hide it and the club owners paid us accordingly.

I thought I was learning about show business. The more painful it was, the more important I thought the experience must be. Hating it, I convinced myself it must be invaluable.

Lovers have a right to betray you friends don't.

There's safety in numbers

Apologizing - a very desperate habit - one that is rarely cured.

Everything is always on the table. I think it's one of the things that's made 'Arrow' special. But we also all collectively feel like 'The Flash' needs to stand on its own two feet, now that it's gotten its launch from 'Arrow.'

We need to put undercover security armed people at the curbside of the terminal with the uniform of policemen. We need to protect the terminal. We need to protect the security checkpoint, the gate, the aircraft, the perimeter.

I'm in control of my life, not anyone in Hollywood.

Old age: the crown of life, our play's last act.

It's a no-win situation with politics; it's always going to be stressful. I'm more into the comedy of life.

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.

Like Prince von Bismarck in diplomacy, I have no secrets.

Not every truth is the better for showing its face undisguised; and often silence is the wisest thing for a man to heed.

Absolute space, in its own nature, without regard to anything external, remains always similar and immovable. Relative space is some movable dimension or measure of the absolute spaces, which our senses determine by its position to bodies, and which is vulgarly taken for immovable space.

It has always seemed to me that those who are without power, who have to create their own in a makeshifit way, know more about life than those who govern.

In films I might look glamorous, but I've been in hair and make-up for two hours.

I don't watch TV. Only while I'm doing it do I see it, really. So I don't know anything. I only know old reggae artists. So that's my thing. Old reggae artists and martial arts.

We can't do much about ensuring that the homeland is safe if our local police and sheriffs' departments don't have the personnel they need to keep our streets and neighborhoods secure.

Globalization presumes sustained economic growth. Otherwise, the process loses its economic benefits and political support.

To win Best Director at Sundance was beyond anything I could have imagined for myself. It's still an incredible feeling to know I won. But as happy as I am about winning, I also know many other women of color have directed amazing films over the years that were equally deserving and didn't win.

I love people! I am a people person. I am a very curious human being. I am very interested in what people have to say. I love cultures, too, so I am always traveling.