The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn an Event.

The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure - if you don't like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to the generation which says if you don't like it, you don't understand and you ought to find out.

[At age 76:] A good life is like a good play -- it has to have a satisfying and exciting third act.

The great actors are the luminous ones. They are the great conductors of the stage.

[on Hollywood] It looks, it feels, as though it had been invented by a Sixth Avenue peepshow man.

Fundamentally I feel that there is as much difference between the stage and the films as between a piano and a violin. Normally you can't become a virtuoso in both.

You grow up the day you have the first real laugh at yourself.