Be yourself -- it's the one thing you can do better than anyone else.

At a flea market I always head for the junk jewelry table first.

I was lucky enough to have the songs in my first show written by George and Ira Gershwin. Then Cole Porter wrote five shows for me

At one time I smoked, but in 1959 I couldn't think of anything else to give up for Lent so I stopped - and I haven't had a cigarette since.

I've never cooked. I can't do much more in the kitchen than make a cup of tea and some toast.

Any audience that gets a laugh out of me gets it while I'm facing them

There's such a thing as theater discipline. One player doesn't appropriate another's inventions

Broadway has been very good to me. But then, I've been very good to broadway.

I can never remember being afraid of an audience. If the audience could do better, they'd be up here on stage and I'd be out there watching them.

I can hold a note as long as the Chase National Bank.

I wouldn't change one thing about my professional life, and I make it a point not to dwell on my mistakes

In a world full of nouns, be a verb.

I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being skin deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?

It's got to do with putting yourself in other people's shoes and seeing how far you can come to truly understand them. I like the empathy that comes from acting.

What more could there be, but the absolute beauty of our lives? Look around you, for heaven's sake and stop thinking. It is only in your thoughts and in analytical processes that you lose yourself.

Solitude does not pull us away from our fellow human beings but instead makes real fellowship possible.

At the heart of all good fiction and at the heart of all good gossip is the same thing: trouble.

I really love printmaking. It’s like a mystery and you’re trying to figure out how to rein it in.

American straightforwardness is almost as disarming as Americans invariably think it is.

You cant not be changed by the experience of seeing extreme poverty. You start to want to think about ways in which you can make the world better.

Never deny a diagnosis, but do deny the negative verdict that may go with it.