There was a saying around MGM: "Norma Shearer got the productions, Greta Garbo supplied the art, and Joan Crawford made the money to pay for both".

I was a strict disciplinarian, perhaps too strict at times, but my God, without discipline what is life?

I think that the most important thing a woman can have - next to talent, of course - is her hairdresser.

I had read the criticisms of me and my movies and they were discerning. They said that Crawford needs a new deal, and they asked if I was doomed to explore forever the emotional misfortunes of the super-sexed modern young woman. And so, to break away from the pattern, I wanted to do "The Gorgeous Hussy". Selznick laughed at me. 'You can't do a costume picture. You're too modern.' But I begged and begged and begged, and so they let me do it. I was totally miscast.

I had always known what I wanted, and that was beauty... in every form... a beautiful house, beautiful man, a beautiful life and image. I was ambitious to get the money which would attain all that for me.

[To the mother of two unruly children in a restaurant after the woman said she really didn't know what to do with her children:] Have you tried infanticide?

While making "Possessed", I wept each morning on my drive to the studio, and I wept all the way back home. I found it impossible to sleep at night, so I'd lie in bed contemplating the future. I fear it with all my heart and soul even as I fear the dark.