Tallulah Bankhead Quotes

I think the Republican party should be placed in drydock and have the barnacles scraped off its bottom.

It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time.

I have three phobias which, could I mute them, would make my life as slick as a sonnet, but as dull as ditch water: I hate to go to bed, I hate to get up, and I hate to be alone.

Only good girls keep diaries. Bad girls don't have time.

If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.

Too many of our countrymen rejoice in stupidity, look upon ignorance as a badge of honor. They condemn everything they don't understand.

All my life I've been terrible at remembering people's names. I once introduced a friend of mine as Martini. Her name was actually Olive.

Fill what is empty, empty what is full, and scratch where it itches.

My father warned me about men and booze but he never said anything about women and cocaine.

They aren't making mirrors like they use to.

They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum.

Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.

The less I behave like Whistler's mother the night before, the more I look like her the morning after.

Say anything about me, darling, as long as it isn't boring.

I'd rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.

Bette [Davis] and I are good friends. There's nothing I wouldn't say to her face - both of them.

Cocaine isn't habit forming. I should know - I've been using it for years.

Will TV kill the theater? If the programs I have seen, save for "Kukla, Fran and Ollie," the ball games and the fights, are any criterion, the theater need not wake up in a cold sweat.

If you really want to help the American theater, don't be an actress, dahling. Be an audience.

I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice. That's what I call a liberal education.

If I were well behaved, I'd die of boredom.

Whatever you have read I have said is almost certainly untrue, except if it is funny, in which case I definitely said it.

Television could perform a great service in mass education, but there's no indication its sponsors have anything like this on their minds.

For acting, darlings, is the world's most perilous trade. Compared with actors, steeple jacks and deep-sea divers lead snug and placid lives.

I'm not childless, darling. I am childfree.

I've had a man and I've had a woman, and there's got to be something better.

They say it's the good girls who keep diaries. The bad girls never have the time. Me, I just wanna live a life I'm gonna remember even if I don't write it down.

[On being asked in her later years if she were Tallulah:] I'm what's left of her, dahling.

In my lifetime I've been to bed with men, women, and odd pieces of furniture.

[To the critic who wrote a negative review:] I am sitting in the smallest room of the house. Your review is before me. Soon it will be behind me.

There is less in this than meets the eye.

[To the man who came up to her at a party and exclaimed effusively, 'Tallulah! I haven't seen you for 41 years!':] I thought I told you to wait in the car.

I'm the foe of moderation, the champion of excess. If I may lift a line from a die-hard whose identity is lost in the shuffle, 'I'd rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.'

Of course cocaine is not adictive, darling. I should know, I've been doing it for years.

I did what I could to inflate the rumor I was on my way to stardom. What I was on my way to, by any mathematical standards known to man, was oblivion, by way of obscurity.

I have enemies I've never met - that's fame.

(On seeing a former lover for the first time in years) I thought I told you to wait in the car.

Acting is a form of confession.

It's one of the tragic ironies of the theatre that only one man in it can count on steady work - the night watchman.

In the theater lying is looked upon as an occupational disease.

I have been absolutely hag-ridden with ambition. If I could wish to have anything in the world it would be to be free of ambition.

I've been called many things, but never an intellectual.

My progress reminded me of the horses in The Whip. They raced at the limit of their speed directly toward the audience. But they raced on a treadmill which canceled out their progress.

I'm not at my best when I moralize or philosophize. Logic is elusive, especially to one who so rarely uses it.

A frozen daiquiri of a scorching afternoon is soothing. It makes living more tolerable.

There have only been two authentic geniuses in the world, Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare and I think you'd better put Shakespeare first, darling.

Working on television is like being shot out of a cannon. They cram you all up with rehearsals, then someone lights a fuse and - .BANG! - there you are in someone's living room.

I detest acting because it is sheer drudgery.

Don't be taken in by the guff that critics are killing the theater. Commonly they sin on the side of enthusiasm. Too often they give their blessing to trash.

I have three phobias ...: I hate going to bed, get up and hate hate being alone.