Elizabeth Taylor Quotes

I find it rather tedious working with some actors who have to go into a corner and bounce up and down, shake their hands and arms, saying to the director, "Just a second - I'll be ready in a few minutes, " while all the other actors are waiting around to get in. Then they say, "OK! I'm ready now." And then they come on and do it exactly the same way they've done it in rehearsal.

I feel like 45. I don't look bad for someone my age, with my history of illnesses and operations and all those anesthetics. When they knock you out, it gives you time to catch up on your beauty sleep.

I've never had an acting lesson. I've never been given techniques. Everything I've done is invented. I just sort of found out [how to do it].

I think I'm finally growing up - and about time.

Clark Gable was the epitome of the movie star - so romantic, such bearing, such friendliness.

I have a woman's body and a child's emotions.

Richard is a very sexy man. He's got that sort of jungle essence that one can sense. (on Richard Burton)

Everything makes me nervous - except making films.

I will love Michael Jackson forever.

Past and future to him were the realities; the present dull, meaningless, only significant if, as now, going back along the sands, he could say to himself: 'Later on, I shall remember.

Success is a great deodorant. It takes away all your past smells.

The beauty of fragrance is that it speaks to your heart and hopefully someone else's.

All I see in the mirror every morning is a face that needs washing.

Looked a lost, pathetic thing, like all old letters; the moment it had matched had gone so long ago.

I DON'T LIKE MY VOICE. I DON'T LIKE THE WAY I LOOK. I DON'T LIKE THE WAY I MOVE. I DON'T LIKE THE WAY I ACT. I MEAN, PERIOD. SO, YOU KNOW, I DON'T LIKE MYSELF.

I have never wanted to be a queen! Cleopatra was a role, and I am an actor, so it was fun to play one, but it's not real.

I want it all quickly 'cause I don't want God to stop and think and wonder if I'm getting more than my share.

I sweat real sweat and I shake real shakes.

Just in case you get pneumonia or die. The dangerous bits are always the last days of shooting.

I gave a very dear friend of mine my humanitarian award. Because you don't need an award to be, or not be, a humanitarian.

When you're fat, the world is divided into two groups - people who bug you and people who leave you alone. The funny thing is, supporters and saboteurs exist in either camp.

I left home as soon as I could, when I was 18. I thought I was in love and got married - the press called it Prince Charming and Cinderella. He was a Hilton so I was the poor little Cinderella. And when I got a divorce nine months later I never told the court why, but he was cruel.

I've always sung in the shower. Now I make the stage a mental shower in order not to get too uptight and enjoy it.

A belly laugh increases the ability of your immune system to fight infections.

I was so strictly brought up that the only time I could get away would be on my own pony. I could ride wherever I wanted on my godfather's estate in Kent.I wasn't brought up to be afraid of anything.

The things that are important to me - being a mother, a businesswoman, an activist - are all things that were borne out of great passion.

I've come through things that would have felled an ox. That fills me with optimism, not just for myself but for our particular species.

Look, sweetheart, I can drink you under any goddamn table you want, so don't worry about me.

I find vocabulary to be a great drawback.

I know I'm vulgar, but would you have me any other way?

The whole point is that writing has a pattern and life hasn't. Life is so untidy. Art is so short and life so long. It is not possible to have perfection in life but it is possible to have perfection in a novel.

It is very strange that the years teach us patience - that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting.

The disaster of being old was in not feeling safe to venture anywhere, of seeing freedom put out of reach.

I have never felt more alive than when I watched my children delight in something, never more alive than when I have watched a great artist perform, and never richer than when I have scored a big check to fight AIDS.

He almost dared to say that her graying mustache gave her a military look, a more distinguished air: his private smile at the thought he had withheld ruffled her as much.

I mean, how many young women get a set of rubies just for doing something wholesome like swimming laps? Or win a diamond ring at ping pong with their husband? Well, I did, and for all of these memories and the people in my life I feel blessed.

They Weren't Allowed to Die There.

I am a very committed wife. And I should be committed too - for being married so many times.

I've been pronounced dead and I've read my own obituaries. And they were the best reviews I ever read.

John Wayne is as tough as an old nut and as soft as a yellow ribbon.

Its best to turn to no one, to seek to please no one, as if there were only oneself in the world. The pleasure of others is a by-product after all, and if ever the whispering voices are allowed to crowd out the one voice, the result is this ... a sort of high-pitched silliness, a terrible silliness.

I think I ended up being the scarlet woman partly because of my rather puritannical upbringing and beliefs. I always chose to think I was in love and that love was synonymous with marriage.

You are who you are. All you can do in this world is help others to be who they are and better themselves.

The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.

It's all about hope, kindness and a connection with one another.

The rain hit the windows like rice; the fire roared hollowly; the autumn afternoon discoloured into darkness.

I'm loud and I'm vulgar, and I wear the pants in the house because somebody's got to, but I am not a monster. I'm not.

I hate being called "Liz", because it can sound like such a hiss.

Everything was handed to me - looks, fame, wealth, honour, love. I rarely had to fight for anything

It appeared to Harriet that she was always the one who remembered having seen other people. They never remembered having seen her. She did not like to seem (even to herself) so much more caught up in the importance of others when they cared so little for her.

I've always preferred animals to little girls or boys. I had my first horse - actually it was a Newfoundland pony - when I was three, and I loved riding, without anyone shackling me - riding bareback as fast as I could.

Her work failed her. She had reached a desperate, claustrophobic stage of being imprisoned halfway in a novel: there was too much behind her for her to retreat and not a glimmer of light ahead. She sat for hours without writing, staring at the last few wrods on the page, seeing no significance in them. Her characters fell into frozen poses, speech died on their lips: they had sat at a banquet for weeks and she had not the power to bring them to their feet again.

I wear perfume even when I'm alone

I'm not like anyone. I'm me.

I fell off my pink cloud with a thud.

I have the emotions of a child in the body of a woman. I was rushed into womanhood for the movies. It caused me long moments of unhappiness and doubt.

If you can't laugh at yourself, you're cooked!

Why shouldn't gay people be allowed to be able to marry? Those against gay marriages say marriage should only be between a man and a woman. God, I of all people know that doesn't always work!

She seemed to be lovely still to herself, as if no amount of looking into mirrors could ruin her illusion.

Without homosexuals there'd be no Hollywood.

People who know me well, call me Elizabeth. I dislike Liz.

I loved being admired by Richard. It was the kind of admiration that mattered to me. I felt adored, worshipped.

Interesting,' he observed, 'what two people can make of the same view. We all see places a bit different to what the next man does.

Michael Jackson is part of my heart. We would do anything for each other.

I don't have a set pattern. I take things as they come. Usually with a great amount of relish. I just lay back and wait for it to happen. And it usually does.

When I'm not with the one I love, I love the one I'm with.

There's no deodorant like success.

You can't choose between right and wrong by taking a census.

I prefer rugby to soccer. I enjoy the violence in rugby, except when they start biting each other's ears off.

I never planned to acquire a lot of jewels or a lot of husbands. For me, life happened, just as it does for anyone else.

Cleopatra: You come before me as a suppliant.
Antony: If you choose to regard me as such.
Cleopatra: You will therefore assume the position of a suppliant before this throne. You will kneel.
Antony: I will *what*?
Cleopatra: On-your-knees!
Antony: You dare ask the Proconsul of the Roman Empire?
Cleopatra: I *asked* it of Julius Caesar. I *demand* it of you

It was hard work being old. It was like being a baby, in reverse. Every day for an infant means some new little thing learned; every day for the old means some little thing lost. Names slip away, dates mean nothing, sequences become muddled, and faces blurred. Both infancy and age are tiring times.

No matter what happens, I'm loud, noisy, earthy and ready for much more living.

When the sun comes up, I have morals again.

She had about her a strong smell of hair-spray and her lunch-time whisky.

When I hear the name Michael Jackson, I think of brilliance, of dazzling stars, lasers and deep emotions. I think he is one of the world's biggest and greatest stars, and it just so happens that he is one of the most gifted music makers the world has ever known. I think he is one of the finest people to hit this planet, and, in my estimation, he is the true King of Pop, Rock, and Soul. I love you Michael.

Acting is, to me now, artificial. Seeing people suffer is real. It couldn't be more real. Some people don't like to look at it in the face because it's painful. But if nobody does, then nothing gets done.

Remember always to give. That is the thing that will make you grow ...

I've been married too many times. How terrible to change children's affiliations, their affections - to give them the insecurity of placing their trust in someone when maybe that someone won't be there next year.

OLIVER DAVENANT did not merely read books. He snuffed them up, took breaths of them into his lungs, filled his eyes with the sight of the print and his head with the sound of words. Some emanation from the book itself poured into his bones, as if he were absorbing steady sunshine. The pages had personality. He was of the kind who cannot have a horrifying book in the room at night. He would, in fine weather, lay it upon an outside sill and close the window. Often Julia would see a book lying on his doormat.

As well as this, his reading led him in and out of love. At first, it was the picture of Alice going up on tiptoe to shake hands with Humpty Dumpty; then the little Fatima in his Arthur Rackham book, her sweet dusky face, the coins hanging on her brow, the billowing trousers and embroidered coat. Her childish face was alive with excitement as she put the key to the lock. "Don't!" he had once cried to her in loud agony.

In London, he would go every Saturday morning to the Public Library to look at a picture of Lorna Doone. Some Saturdays it was not there, and he would go home again, wondering who had borrowed her, in what kind of house she found herself that week-end. On his last Saturday, he went to say good-bye and the book was not there, so he sat down at a table to await its return. Just before the library was to be shut for lunch-time, he went to the shelf and kissed the two books which would lie on either side of his Lorna when she was returned an

I don't love acting; I love chocolate.

A strong film director does leave you to your devices. A strong director allows you to be free and you trust that he's there and he will tell you if you've gone too far. A strong director allows you to be much more experimental and take greater chances than a director who isn't secure within himself.

I don't think President Bush is doing anything at all about Aids. In fact, I'm not sure he even knows how to spell Aids.

I use my fame now when I want to help a cause or other people.

The day comes in slowly to those who are ill. The night has separated them from the sleepers, who return to them like strangers from a distant land, full of clumsy preparations for the living, the earth itself creaking towards the light.

I believe in mind over matter and doing anything you set your mind on.

There is no deodorant like success.

There's no summing-up, but a sense of incompleteness. After years of building up each unique personality, in the end there is no moment of putting lines beneath the sum and adding up to see what it all amounts too.

I do enjoy life, I really do. Especially if I wake up the next day.

I've only slept with the men I've been married to. How many women can make that claim?

When you're older, you'll appreciate the advantages of sleeping alone.

On Mother's Day: It's just a rip-off, to tell the truth, a chance to sell my perfume and other things that ladies like.

I'm not afraid. Life is just such an adventure to me.

Originally, we were going to set up a cappuccino bar in the showroom, but we've been so busy, ... We decided when we're old and grey, we're going to set up a coffee shop, and we formed the company about 18 months ago when we thought of the name. It's going to be TLC - Tastes Like Chocolate.

I had a hollow leg. I could drink everyone under the table and not get drunk. My capacity was terrifying.

The public me, the one named Elizabeth Taylor, has become a lot of hokum and fabrication - a bunch of drivel - and I find her slightly revolting.

I just loved the feeling of flying. I could jump six feet bareback and it was the closest thing to being Pegasus and flying next to God. It's the most liberating freedom-making feeling in the world.

Maggie the cat is alive. I'm alive.

Every breath you take today should be with someone else in mind ...

I don't entirely approve of some of the things I have done, or am, or have been. But I'm me. God knows, I'm me.