I have been ambitious to be a somebody from the time I was 5 years old

I wasn't straining at the bit to become a movie star any more than I had plotted to get out of vaudeville and into Broadway musicals

The only things I read are gossip columns. If I read three pages of a book, I'm out like a light. When I pick up the book again, I've forgotten what I've read and have to start over again. By page three, even if I've just awakened from a nine -hour nap, I fall asleep again. So if anyone gives me a book, it had better have lots of pictures.

I remember Tallulah (Bankhead) telling of going into a public ladies' room and discovering there was no toilet tissue. She looked underneath the booth and said to the lady in the next stall, 'I beg your pardon, do you happen to have any toilet tissue in there?' The lady said no. So Tallulah said, 'Well, then, dahling, do you have two fives for a ten?'

Once I had the attention, all I had to do was deliver.

I've made a wonderful living playing that theatrical character - the professional brassy dame

As far as dramas are concerned, it's considered passe for playwrights to turn out anything the average person can understand