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.

My departure from Hollywood was described as a walk-out. No one understood that I was cracking up.

I have a role now that I think becomes me. I am a grandmother.

Unlike the stage, I never found it helpful to be good in a bad movie.

As an actress, I was trained to show emotion I did not feel, or no emotion at all.

I was not cut out to be a rebel.

I always tried to play my hunches.

My mother would not talk to me for weeks, would not stay under my roof for as long as I was married to Oleg.

I hole up now and then and do nothing for days but read.

We cannot calculate the numbers of people who left, fled or were fished out of Europe just ahead of the Holocaust.

Cars, furs, and gems were not my weaknesses.

I was plunged into what was known as the debutante social whirl. This was one of the ways fathers justified their own hard work and sacrifices.

I am not the kind of woman who excuses her mistakes while reminding us of what used to be.

Rehearsals and screening rooms are often unreliable because they can’t provide the chemistry between an audience and what appears on the stage or screen.

I knew I could not cope with the future unless I was able to rediscover the past.

Wealth, beauty, and fame are transient. When those are gone, little is left except the need to be useful.

Chaplin was notoriously strict with his sons and rarely gave them spending money.

I’m not sure I can explain the nature of Jack Kennedy’s charm, but he took life just as it came.

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.