I think Gypsy [Rose Lee] would be appalled at today's rawer, more blatant displays of the female form. She was, in her own way, a prude.

Leave the fireworks for those who cast no spark of their own.

Gypsy [Rose Lee] is as unique as she is timeless. Her story is classic Americana, and the strangest rags-to-riches saga you'll ever read; I like to call it Horatio Alger meets Tim Burton.

Gypsy [Rose Lee ] was a masterful storyteller, and her memoir and by extension, the musical weren't only Gypsy's monument; they were also her chance for monumental revisionism.

An amusing city, Chicago, any way you look at it. I'm afraid we are in for the time of our lives.

Female spies typically represented one of two extremes: the seductress who employed her wiles to manipulate men, and the cross-dresser who blended in by impersonating them.

The real Rose Hovick was seriously mentally disturbed; June Havoc called her a beautiful little ornament that was damaged.

A half-century before Madonna, Gypsy [Rose Lee] understood how to make performance out of desire, how to exploit the very human and eternal instinct to always want most what we'll never have.

Gypsy [Rose Lee] wasn't a linear person, and she didn't live life in a linear fashion. She was relentlessly self-inventing, and moved backward as often as she moved forward.

In Gypsy [Rose Lee] the musical, her mother, 'Mama Rose', is portrayed as a slightly eccentric, pushy, ambitious stage mother, but that version doesn't come close to the truth.

I greatly admired Gypsy [Rose Lee] for being able to rise above her circumstances; I was terrified of her; I thought she was generous; I thought she was brilliant; I thought she was cruel.

Any negotiation has a limit. Otherwise, war is irrelevant.

He cannot ravish. He can only woo.

I played possum. I did this, as the possum does, out of fear.

The twentieth century has exhibited a barbarism and lack of respect for human life on a massive scale just about unknown before.

Sometimes I think to myself, "I wonder if Meryl Streep is ever like, 'Oh gosh, everyone thinks I'm so perfect! I wish that someone would give me a note.'"

My father gave me free run of his library. When I think of my boyhood, I think in terms of the books I read.

My family is taken care of, I'm taken care of and that's all that matters to me.

Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do. Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you. Sanity means tying it to your own actions.

He preaches well that lives well

I was born in 1935, and as far back as I can remember, I was sketching designs. My first subject was an aircraft, which I imagined myself piloting.