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

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.

The bronze powder business, however, no longer required my personal attention, and was well managed by those I had chosen as the guardians of a secret, which was long and honourably kept.

The kinds of shows that seem to work now, the comedy shows, are those which require very little attention. They're superficial and I like articulate comedy.

The constant attention is what is so difficult.

As a scientist, my attention became totally focused on global warming some 15 years ago by the elegant and powerful measurements of carbon dioxide trapped in ice cores taken as much as 2 miles deep from the great East Antarctica ice sheet.

Anytime you have a difficult encounter with your child, there is a good chance that at least one of these factors is bringing out the worst in him or her: transitions, time pressure, competition for your attention, conflicting objectives.

I think it would have been a lot better for him to say, I did it and I'm sorry, McGwire was never one to show a lot of emotion on the field, not a player who sought attention and craved to be thought of as a nice guy.

I wanted to write a story that demanded the viewer's attention.

After some minor pieces of theoretical study that I worked on, a student in my statistical mechanics class brought to my attention a problem in polyelectrolytes.

I don't want to come off like the jealous brother who wasn't getting the attention, but it was like no one was really into me anyway. I wasn't really a priority.

If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or representation.

There's a lot of other movies I like, but I don't even pay attention to directors to tell you the truth.

The genius of the economic machine is in its ability to convert these indulgences into profitability. It converts desire into attention, a grip on our eyeballs and eardrums, which in turn can be marketed to advertisers.

The police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.

The poet produces the beautiful by fixing his attention on something real.

The nation did not begin to realize the extraordinary possibilities of the vast Western territory until its attention was thus suddenly and definitely concentrated on the Pacific by the annual addition of over fifty million dollars to the circulating medium.

Movies absorb our attention more completely, I think.

I guess because I pay so much attention to the physical part of the character, I don't look upon it as like Charlize Theron up there. I don't think of them as like Charlize Theron films.