Tallulah Bankhead Quotes

Too many of our countrymen rejoice in stupidity, look upon ignorance as a badge of honor. They condemn everything they don't understand.

I'm the foe of moderation, the champion of excess. If I may lift a line from a die-hard whose identity is lost in the shuffle, 'I'd rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.'

Working on television is like being shot out of a cannon. They cram you all up with rehearsals, then someone lights a fuse and - .BANG! - there you are in someone's living room.

I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice. That's what I call a liberal education.

Whatever you have read I have said is almost certainly untrue, except if it is funny, in which case I definitely said it.

[To the critic who wrote a negative review:] I am sitting in the smallest room of the house. Your review is before me. Soon it will be behind me.

Will TV kill the theater? If the programs I have seen, save for "Kukla, Fran and Ollie," the ball games and the fights, are any criterion, the theater need not wake up in a cold sweat.

Only good girls keep diaries. Bad girls don't have time.

[On being asked in her later years if she were Tallulah:] I'm what's left of her, dahling.

There is less in this than meets the eye.

(On seeing a former lover for the first time in years) I thought I told you to wait in the car.

I'll come and make love to you at five o'clock. If I'm late, start without me.

Say anything about me, darling, as long as it isn't boring.

[To the man who came up to her at a party and exclaimed effusively, 'Tallulah! I haven't seen you for 41 years!':] I thought I told you to wait in the car.

No man worth his salt, no man of spirit and spine, no man for whom I could have any respect, could rejoice in the identification of Tallulah's husband. It's tough enough to be bogged down in a legend. It would be even tougher to marry one.

If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.

Fill what is empty, empty what is full, and scratch where it itches.

Television could perform a great service in mass education, but there's no indication its sponsors have anything like this on their minds.

My father warned me about men and booze but he never said anything about women and cocaine.

I've had a man and I've had a woman, and there's got to be something better.

All my life I've been terrible at remembering people's names. I once introduced a friend of mine as Martini. Her name was actually Olive.

I'm as pure as the driven slush.

I'm not childless, darling. I am childfree.

I have three phobias which, could I mute them, would make my life as slick as a sonnet, but as dull as ditch water: I hate to go to bed, I hate to get up, and I hate to be alone.

I have been tight as a tick! Fried as a mink! Stiff as a goat!

I detest acting because it is sheer drudgery.

Wracked with a hangover I do my muttering over a Black Velvet, a union of champagne and stout. Don't be swindled into believing there's any cure for a hangover. I've tried them all: iced tomatoes, hot clam juice, brandy peaches. Like the common cold it defies solution. Time alone can stay it. The hair of the dog? That way lies folly. It's as logical as trying to put out a fire with applications of kerosene.

There have only been two authentic geniuses in the world, Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare and I think you'd better put Shakespeare first, darling.

If I were well behaved, I'd die of boredom.

Cocaine isn't habit forming. I should know - I've been using it for years.

I have been absolutely hag-ridden with ambition. If I could wish to have anything in the world it would be to be free of ambition.

I've been called many things, but never an intellectual.

Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.

They say it's the good girls who keep diaries. The bad girls never have the time. Me, I just wanna live a life I'm gonna remember even if I don't write it down.

I'd rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.

It's one of the tragic ironies of the theatre that only one man in it can count on steady work - the night watchman.

Don't be taken in by the guff that critics are killing the theater. Commonly they sin on the side of enthusiasm. Too often they give their blessing to trash.

They aren't making mirrors like they use to.

For acting, darlings, is the world's most perilous trade. Compared with actors, steeple jacks and deep-sea divers lead snug and placid lives.

Do you know what my ambition is in life? To be without ambition. As far back as I can remember I've been absolutely hag-ridden. I'd like to attain the state of mind that the Indians call Nirvana. That, for me, would happen if I were free of ambition.

I've tried several varieties of sex. The conventional position makes me claustrophobic, and the others either give me a stiff neck or lockjaw.

I have enemies I've never met - that's fame.

I'm the foe of moderation, the champion of excess.

I have three phobias ...: I hate going to bed, get up and hate hate being alone.

A Republican. A Republican. That's worse than being a goddamned Communist!

Drink reacts on its practitioners in conflicting ways. One brave can knock off a quart of Scotch and look and act as sober as Herbert Hoover. Another, after three Martinis, makes two-cushion carroms off the chaise lounge as he attempts to negotiate the bathroom.

Acting is a form of confession.

If you really want to help the American theater, don't be an actress, dahling. Be an audience.