Quotes

[on the late James Dean]: And he took me for a ride that I thought would be my last, up in the Hollywood hills and so fast that my heart was in my throat, but instead of saying to him, 'Slow down, Jimmy,' I didn't say anything. I was, like, 'Whe-e-e-e-e.' As long as I didn't say, 'Hey, don't go so fast,' I was a comrade. And after that we just always got on. He knew I was in his corner.

[About actresses successfully blending their career and their family]: It mixes very well if you have a balance about it. It was just at the time when I had a family, I wasn't balanced about it. I was rigid about how it should be and you can't be rigid about anything. I was brought up to think there was a proper place for everything. I thought then that you shouldn't nurse a baby in the theater. Well, now I think, why not? Everything is proper as long as it's congenial. Nowadays, the young women are much more relaxed about that. Look at Sissy Spacek and Meryl Streep.

[About her friendship with James Dean in 1991]: I wasn't attracted to him, I loved Jimmy's spirit, but I didn't want to 'make' him. We were comrades.

If Sally Bowles had ever been Liza Minnelli, she would have set Berlin on its ear.

[on her professional friendship with Ruby Dee]: Ruby just lost her husband, well, it's a mystery of life. But Ruby is just so beautiful. She's just wonderful. We had a good time doing the movie.

[on the list of awards she has won over the years]: It's wonderful. I have worked on that stage a lot of times, on that wonderful stage in the Kennedy theater there.

[About living in a hotel]: It's very pleasant, there is no housework. I remain unmarried, although I don't always live alone.

I always thought it would be wonderful to wake up in the morning and look like Brigitte Bardot.

[In 1976 when she remembered the Emily Dickinson poetry]: Seventeen years ago I did a recording of her poetry, and then I started to read.

[In 1974 about her religion]: I was sent to Sunday School in the Episcopal Church and I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church, and never went back. If it tells the truth about life and the human heart, if it speaks of men's failings and also their grandeur and hope, then it is religious.

[on the death of Marlon Brando]: He didn't love acting, but his gift was so great he couldn't defile it.

[on her Nanny character]: I cry all the time, and laugh, too.

[In 1981]: I think life is translated. We're always in a state of change. Acting is more translated than a lot of things. Theater is about what we are. We need it to express ourselves.

[In 2006]: 'The Stage!' I knew it was where I wanted to be, I loved it all. It became this great source of nourishment, spiritual nourishment, for me. I want to touch people with the meaning of life. What is thrilling about the theater is that it's a forum where people come and for those two or three hours belong to something, to ideas, to a feeling of being a member of the human race.

Pictures make me look like a twelve-year-old boy who flunked his body-building course.

Acting is always an adventure, and a struggle, and a quest to find the truth...It's wanting to do it right, that's where the fear comes in, but who can say what's right? We're very delicate creatures, aren't we?

I love biographies. I get very excited by the truth that comes out of what people have left behind, like letters. I first fell in love with Emily Dickinson when I read her letters. It's like listening to someone's heart.

Some people asked me, 'Why do you have to cry so much in [stage play] 'The Last of Mrs. Lincoln?' My answer was that she was always crying. She couldn't speak of her children who died, without crying. And after the assassination, her whole life was gone. She clung to the pain. As actors, that's what we deal with. My mother used to say to me, 'But you're so dramatic.' Yes, I'd say, that's what I'm supposed to be. Life is dramatic, all the time, much more than on stage.

If I had a bosom I could rule the world.