Quotes from Tallulah Bankhead

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 sniffed stardom. But my nose betrayed me.

Apostates have hinted that I'm the ill-begotten daughter of Medusa and the Marquis de Sade. As against these slanders there are the hymns of my champions, equally inaccurate, that I'm a fusion of Annie Laurie, Bopeep, Florence Nightingale and whichever waif Lillian Gish played in The Orphans of the Storm. Somewhere in between these contrary verdicts lies the truth.

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

The humiliation of being in a poor play, of playing a shabby role, of appearing before disgruntled audiences, if any, of being curdled by hostile reviews, can outrage all human dignity. Being caught in a long-run success is almost as bad. The fearful monotony, the boredom of saying the same words every night, at the same minute, has unhinged the mind of more than one actress.

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

There's less in this than meets the eye.

Once I achieved stardom, the whole apparatus of the theater palled on me.

I'm supposed to be mercurial! Honey-haired, cello-voiced, mercurial Tellulah, that's me!

I'm intoxicated by applause. It's my nectar.

My doom was sealed when I saw a girl turn cartwheels at a circus in Birmingham.

In view of my scorn for the theater, its practices and delinquencies, why have I continued to act in it for thirty years? I have no alternate profession. Lobster-trapping? Placer-mining? Smuggling? I haven't the muscles, the equipment or the nerve.

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

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.

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

There is less in this than meets the eye.

There have been only two geniuses in the world. Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare.

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

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

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

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.

Cocaine habit forming? Of course not. I ought to know, I've been using it for years.

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.

making peace with people is the only wat yo success