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.

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

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

I think the Republican party should be placed in drydock and have the barnacles scraped off its bottom.

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.

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

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.'