I ask myself: Would I have been any worse off if I had stayed home or lived on a farm instead of shock treatments and medication?

Some women feel the best cure for a broken heart is a new beau.

I learned quickly at Columbia that the only eye that mattered was the one on the camera.

What a different world it was when I first sailed for Europe in 1930, with my mother, sister, and brother to spend six months abroad.

Children don’t understand about people loving each other and then suddenly not.

In later years, I craved foods that were almost always fattening.

I dated dozens of young men, had fun with all, made commitments to none.

The Hollywood structure was monopolistic, run by four or five big studios.

I existed in a world that never is , a prison of the mind.

I needed to be accepted, not humored. I intended to act.

When I met Jack Kennedy, he was a serious young man with a dream. He was not a womanizer, not as I understood the term.

Day after day, I spent long afternoons in the talent pool, being told how to walk, how to talk, how to sit.

In my early days in Hollywood I tried to be economical. I designed my own clothes, much to my mother’s distress.

I do not recall spending long hours in front of a mirror loving my reflection.

The main cause of my difficulties stemmed from the tragedy of my daughter’s unsound birth and my inability to face my feelings.

I used up every cent I earned as an actress.

I remember the 1940s as a time when we were united in a way known only to that generation. We belonged to a common cause-the war.

When my mood was high, I seemed normal, even buoyant. I felt smarter. I had secrets. I could see God in a light bulb.

Eccentric behavior is not routinely noticed around a movie set.

In the months leading up to World War II, there was a tendency among many Americans to talk absently about the trouble in Europe. Nothing that happened an ocean away seemed very threatening.

I existed in a world that never is – the prison of the mind.

The word actress has always seemed less a job description to me than a title.

The Howard Hughes I knew began to change after his plane crash in 1941.

I simply did not want my face to be my talent.

When you have spent an important part of your life playing Let’s Pretend, it’s often easy to see symbolism where none exists.

Fonda and Gary Cooper had the best sense of timing of all the actors I knew.

It is difficult to write about any form of mental disease, especially your own, without sounding as if you were examining a bug under glass.

I followed the same diet for 20 years, eliminating starches, living on salads, lean meat, and small portions.

There were days that I worked all the time, without a layoff, or a rest, finishing one picture and reporting for another sometimes on the same day.

Jealousy is, I think, the worst of all faults because it makes a victim of both parties.

I used to annoy my father by telling him how much I felt luck was with me.

For years it never occurred to me to question the judgment of those in charge at the studio.

It was the fashion of the time, still is, to feel that all actors are neurotic, or they would not be actors.

I had been offered a Hollywood contract before my 18th birthday. It gave me the spark I needed.

Those who become mentally ill often have a history of chronic pain.

Everyone should see Hollywood once, I think, through the eyes of a teenage girl who has just passed a screen test.

I was fine when it came to cheering up others, not so fine with myself.

Hollywood can be hard on women, but it did not cause my problems.

Life is a little like a message in a bottle, to be carried by the winds and the tides.

I had known Cole Porter in Hollywood and New York, spent many a warm hour at his home, and met the talented and original people who were drawn to him.

Throughout my career, I was to be cast as a frontier girl, an aristocrat, an Arabian, a Eurasian, a Polynesian, and a Chinese.

The role of a female outlaw was not exactly custom-made for someone recently out of a finishing-school!

I was fortunate enough to work under directors who were, most of them, brilliant, emotional men.

Houses are one of my passions. I probably should have been an interior decorator.

Men are wonderful. I adore them. They always give you the benefit of the doubt.

I had no romantic interest in Gable. I considered him an older man.

Trying to make order out of my life was like trying to pick up a jellyfish.

About my career I was serious and earnest, sometimes impatient.

I was going to live on my salary or go down swinging.

I admire anyone who rids himself of an addiction.