TALLULAH BANKHEAD QUOTES
American actress (1902-1968)
If you want to help the American theater, don't be an actress, be an audience.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
attributed, 20,000 Quips & Quotes
I sniffed stardom. But my nose betrayed me.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
Tallulah: My Autobiography
I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice. That's what I call a liberal education.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
Tallulah: My Autobiography
I'm as pure as the driven slush.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
Saturday Evening Post, Apr. 12, 1947
I'm intoxicated by applause. It's my nectar.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
Tallulah: My Autobiography
I did what I could to inflate the rumor I was on my way to stardom. What I was on my way to, by any mathematical standards known to man, was oblivion, by way of obscurity.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
Tallulah: My Autobiography
The humiliation of being in a poor play, of playing a shabby role, of appearing before disgruntled audiences, if any, of being curdled by hostile reviews, can outrage all human dignity. Being caught in a long-run success is almost as bad. The fearful monotony, the boredom of saying the same words every night, at the same minute, has unhinged the mind of more than one actress.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
Tallulah: My Autobiography
Here's a rule I recommend: Never practice two vices at once.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
Tallulah: My Autobiography
In view of my scorn for the theater, its practices and delinquencies, why have I continued to act in it for thirty years? I have no alternate profession. Lobster-trapping? Placer-mining? Smuggling? I haven't the muscles, the equipment or the nerve.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
Tallulah: My Autobiography
It's one of the tragic ironies of the theatre that only one man in it can count on steady work -- the night watchman.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
Tallulah: My Autobiography
Only good girls keep diaries. Bad girls don't have the time.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
attributed, The Pleasures of Diaries: Four Centuries of Private Writing
They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
attributed, IMDb
There's less in this than meets the eye.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
Tallulah: My Autobiography
My doom was sealed when I saw a girl turn cartwheels at a circus in Birmingham.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
Tallulah: My Autobiography
Once I achieved stardom, the whole apparatus of the theater palled on me.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
Tallulah: My Autobiography
Apostates have hinted that I'm the ill-begotten daughter of Medusa and the Marquis de Sade. As against these slanders there are the hymns of my champions, equally inaccurate, that I'm a fusion of Annie Laurie, Bopeep, Florence Nightingale and whichever waif Lillian Gish played in The Orphans of the Storm. Somewhere in between these contrary verdicts lies the truth.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
Tallulah: My Autobiography
The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
Tallulah: My Autobiography
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.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
attributed, IMDb
I'm supposed to be mercurial! Honey-haired, cello-voiced, mercurial Tellulah, that's me!
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
Tallulah: My Autobiography
Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
Tallulah: My Autobiography