It's more interesting to put yourself in the place of Bette Davis than Irene Dunne, I guess.

Joan Rivers is a very wise lady. We're good friends, and I find her very much an inspiration as to how to conduct your life, and how to remain very youthful, with ambitions and dreams. Anyway, she always says that she says "yes" to everything, because you never know which thing will click, or be thrilling.

I read a lot of those Single Girl in New York books, like "Fear of Flying," where you could sort of put yourself, through transference, into the Jewish Girl in New York situation.

I don't think I could ever go to Auschwitz, because when we took that tour of MGM, I nearly collapsed outside the Thalberg building.

I grew up with "Follies." I saw it when I was fifteen. It was the original production, and of course, that production will never be equaled.

There's a real fantasy quotient to my work. Any play that I've written for myself to perform in basically begins with the idea, "Wouldn't it be fun to be, say, Jean Harlow in a pre-code movie?"

I had two chances to fail [working for Disney]. The first one, they said was "too juvenile." The second one was,they give you general areas to work in. They said, "Set 'My Fair Lady' in ancient Egypt."I came up with this idea about an Egyptian princess, and I gave her, as a sidekick, a little scarab. I had a telephone meeting with the executive "handling" me, and he said, "I looked over the notes. Very cute. But lose the beetle.Beetles don't talk." Well, how do you answer that? I said, "Excuse me just a moment, I've got a teacup calling me on the other line."