I couldn't remember ever having seen a young man with such power, so many facets of expression, so much sheer invention as an actor.

Two of the cruelest, most primitive punishments our town deals out to those who have fallen from favor are the empty mailbox and the silent telephone.

You had to stand in line to hate him.

Lucille Ball hates the color of her hair, too, and says 'I should wear a sign on my chest saying I hate it, but Technicolor demands it.'

I wasn't allowed to speak while my husband was alive, and since he's gone no one has been able to shut me up.

I can wear a hat or take it off, but either way it's a conversation piece.

No matter what you say about the town, and anything you say probably is true, there's never been another like it.

Smart writers never understand why their satires on our town are never successful. What they refuse to accept is that you can't satirize a satire.

Nobody's interested in sweetness and light.

Hollywood was always heartbreak town, though most of the world fancied it to be Shangri-La, King Solomon's mines, and Fort Knox rolled into one big ball of 24-karat gold.

In Hollywood gratitude is Public Enemy Number One.

Creativity is the work of your hands or the work of your tongue so you have to be careful what you say because it would cost you big time.

But what of black women?... I most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire.

Nobody ever tells me to give them a pass or anything. My job is to score goals, and if I don't shoot the puck, I can't score goals.

My room for books and study or for sitting and thinking about nothing in particular to see what would happen was at the end of a hall.

Things good in themselves ... perfectly valid in the integrity of their origins, become fetters if they cannot alter.

Use what you've got. What you need is usually there if you can see it and if you have the courage to use it.

I made the decision that my contribution needed to be more musical than political. My music was enough, politically. Art matters. Art was enough. My music was enough to say what I had to say.

I may say it of our preposterous use of books,--He knew not what to do, and so he read.

He who has ceased to enjoy his friend's superiority has ceased to love him.

I'm a full-time mom. I've never felt as prepared, as before maternity.