Oscar Wilde: 'Do you mind if I smoke?' Sarah Bernhardt: 'I don't care if you burn.'

Each action of the actor on the stage should be the visible concomitant of his thoughts.

If I have a foreign accent—which I much regret—it is cosmopolitan, but not Teutonic. I am a daughter of the great Jewish race, and my somewhat uncultivated language is the outcome of our enforced wanderings.

Me pray? Never! I'm an atheist.

New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion, and perhaps somebody's castle-roof perforated.

To be a good actor... it is necessary to have a firmly tempered soul, to be surprised at nothing, to resume each minute the laborious task that has barely just been finished.

Those who know the joys and miseries of celebrities when they have passed the age of forty know how to defend themselves.