Tallulah Bankhead Quotes

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

I'd rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

For acting, darlings, is the world's most perilous trade.

Compared with actors, steeple jacks and deep-sea divers lead snug and placid lives.

No man worth his salt, no man of spirit and spine, no man for whom I could have any respect, could rejoice in the identification of Tallulah's husband. It's tough enough to be bogged down in a legend. It would be even tougher to marry one.

Going down on a woman gives me a stiff neck, going down on a man gives me lockjaw and conventional sex gives me claustrophobia.

I'm as pure as the driven slush.

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.

Do you know what my ambition is in life? To be without ambition.

As far back as I can remember I've been absolutely hag-ridden. I'd like to attain the state of mind that the Indians call Nirvana. That, for me, would happen if I were free of ambition.

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.

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

Drink reacts on its practitioners in conflicting ways.

One brave can knock off a quart of Scotch and look and act as sober as Herbert Hoover. Another, after three Martinis, makes two-cushion carroms off the chaise lounge as he attempts to negotiate the bathroom.

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

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

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

Acting is a form of confession.

It's unlikely I'll ever submit to a psychiatrist's couch.

I don't want some stranger prowling around through my psyche, monkeying with my id. I don't need an analyst to tell me that I have never had any sense of security. Who has?

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

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

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

I detest acting because it is sheer drudgery.

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

If you know your Bible and your Shakespeare and can shoot craps, you have a liberal education.

I've tried several varieties of sex. The conventional position makes me claustrophobic and the others give me a stiff neck or lockjaw.

I'm the foe of moderation, the champion of excess.

I have been tight as a tick! Fried as a mink! Stiff as a goat!

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

A Republican. A Republican. That's worse than being a goddamned Communist!

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.

[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.

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

Let's not quibble! 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.

I'm not at my best when I moralize or philosophize.

Logic is elusive, especially to one who so rarely uses it.

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

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