Quotes from Elizabeth Taylor

Its best to turn to no one, to seek to please no one, as if there were only oneself in the world. The pleasure of others is a by-product after all, and if ever the whispering voices are allowed to crowd out the one voice, the result is this...a sort of high-pitched silliness, a terrible silliness.

If we do not alter with the times, the times yet alter us. We may stand perfectly still, but our surroundings shift round and we are not in the same relationship to them for long; just as a chameleon, matching perfectly the greenness of a leaf, should know that the leaf will one day fade.

There's no summing-up, but a sense of incompleteness. After years of building up each unique personality, in the end there is no moment of putting lines beneath the sum and adding up to see what it all amounts too.

She was a tall woman with big bones and a noble face, dark eyebrows and a neatly folded jowl. She would have made a distinguished-looking man and, sometimes, wearing evening dress, looked like some famous general in drag.

If you hate it, if you find you have made a mistake, it will still have been a change. As with a holiday, if it ends in your wishing to come home, its aim is accomplished.

My plans for today are to hang about hoping for a glimpse of her, to have my heart eaten away by the thought of her; to feel my blood bounding maddeningly, ridiculously, like a young boy's; to despair; to realise the weight of my misery and hunger with each step I take.

She felt locked away in herself, but ignorant of her identity, and often she awoke suddenly in the night, without any idea of who she was; thinking, firstly, that she had died.

People are different in different places,' he thought hazily. 'And if they're all right in one place, it's best to leave them there.

None wished to appear greedy, or obsessed by food; but food made the breaks in the day, and menus offered a little choosing, and satisfactions and disappointments, as once life had.

Remember always to give. That is the thing that will make you grow...

And the idea of him ever since. . . . Our feelings about people change as we grow up: but if we are left with an idea instead of a person, perhaps that never changes. After every mistake Charles made, I expect you thought: 'Vesey wouldn't have done that.' But an idea can't ever make mistakes. He led a perfect life in your brain. When he turned up again, the climate was right for him, tempered by your imagination. But his climate isn't right for you.

People are sorry for brides who lose their husbands early, from some accident, or war. And they should be sorry, Mrs Palfrey thought. But the other thing is worse.

The disaster of being old was in not feeling safe to venture anywhere, of seeing freedom put out of reach.

Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we report to work.

All that she saw and felt tired her, and she longed to shut out the world and be secure in the womb of her imagination.

One is left so much on one's own. People are shy of the bereaved. They don't quite know what to be.

But so little does the rest of the world seem to care if we act nobly or otherwise that no help came to her

I adore wearing gems, but not because they are mine. You can't possess radiance, you can only admire it.

Clark Gable was the epitome of the movie star - so romantic, such bearing, such friendliness.

I feel very adventurous. There are so many doors to be opened, and I'm not afraid to look behind them.

I'm not afraid. Life is just such an adventure to me.

People who know me well, call me Elizabeth. I dislike Liz.

The public library is more than a repository of books. It's a mysterious, wondrous place with the power to change lives.

The ups and downs, the problems and stress, along with all the happiness, have given me optimism and hope because I am living proof of survival.