Quotes from Tallulah Bankhead

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

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

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

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

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

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

Acting is a form of confession.

Acting is a form of confusion.

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.

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.

The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again I'd make all the same mistakes - only sooner.

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

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

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

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.

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

My heart is as pure as the driven slush.

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

Here's a rule I recommend. Never practice two vices at once.

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."

There is less in this than meets the eye.

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

The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.