If you give audiences a chance they'll do half your acting for you.

If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get - only with what you are expecting to give - which is everything.

As one goes through life, one learns that if you don't paddle your own canoe, you don't move.

Never complain. Never explain.

I have no romantic feelings about age. Either you are interesting at any age or you are not. There is nothing particularly interesting about being old - or being young, for that matter.

Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got not to forget to laugh.

I have not lived as a woman. I have lived as a man. I've just done what I damn well wanted to, and I've made enough money to support myself, and ain't afraid of being alone

You politicians remain professional because the voters remain amateur.

If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.

If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married.

Write it as you see in your own perspective, you may be right or wrong but then what, that's how you see it

We may never pick up a paintbrush or sculpt a masterpiece, but each one of us—without exception—is an artist in our own way.

Classifying the stars has helped materially in all studies of the structure of the universe.

The Free State men, myself among them, took it for granted that Missouri was a slave state.

I think my putting could be better, my short game.

So much of life, so much of work, is luck.

It's nice to bring the changes with everything you do. As an actor, that's what you want to do, all the time.

What's that?" "The laundry basket?" "No, next to it." "I don't see anything next to it." "It's my last shred of dignity. It's very small.

I love words; I love the way they sound. Once I've worked on everything else, the last drafts of my books come down to how they sound.

We don't play to be seen. I'm addicted to music, not audiences.