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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

I always tried to play my hunches.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

I loved to eat. For all of Hollywood's rewards, I was hungry for most of those 20 years.

I used up every cent I earned as an actress.

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

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

Cars, furs, and gems were not my weaknesses.

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

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

I was not cut out to be a rebel.

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

Eccentric behavior is not routinely noticed around a movie set.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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