Quotes from Ava Gardner

I do owe Mickey one thing: he taught me how much I enjoyed sex.

When you get to be my age, baby, you have to pay time more respect.

I think the most vulgar thing about Hollywood is the way it believes its own gossip.

I fell down in Hyde Park with a friend who'd had a hip operation, and neither of us could get up again. People must have thought we were a couple of drunks rolling around and walked on by.

Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.

I do everything for a reason. Most of the time the reason is money.

I want to remember it all, the good times and the bad times, the late nights, the boozing, the dancing into dawns, and all the great and not-so-great people I met and loved in those years.

What's the point? My face, shall we say, looks lived in.

There was no way the marriages could have survived. Nor do I regret that they didn't.

Sing me not a song; let me hear your recital of veneration and respect; this I will listen to over and over when I share your need of pleasing.

After my screen test the director clapped his hands gleefully and yelled "She can't talk! She can't act! She's sensational!"

Mama, you know, poor baby, she'd had her family all finished: four daughters and a couple of sons, and suddenly, I arrived in her midlife on Christmas Eve 1922.

Fame and fortune does not mean anything if you don't have a happy home.

I did a lot of hokey movies when I was starting out at MGM. Good and bad, mostly bad.

I think the main reason my marriages failed is that I always loved too well but never wisely.

I don't mind growing old. If I have to go before my time, this is how I'll go-- cigarette in one hand, glass of scotch in the other.

I suffered, I really suffered, with all three of my husbands. And I tried damn hard with all three, starting each marriage certain that it was going to last until the end of my life. Yet none of them lasted more than a year or two.

When he fell down the stairs, he told people he'd had a stroke. He was just pissed out of his skull. I love Dirk, he is such a drama queen.

Some of the things that I regret most in my life happened when I was drinking. I'm just not good with alcohol. And I don't give a damn what time of the day it is, I just drink too much.

fame gives you everything you never wanted.

bothered. "I'm okay taking notes," I said

Hollywood is loneliness beside the swimming pool.

What I'd really like to say about stardom is it gave me everything i never wanted.

To be possessed when you are a child is just a wonderful feeling. It makes you feel safe. It makes you feel loved. But later if anyone tried to possess me - oh boy, I was out of there.