Mercedes McCambridge Quotes

I've always had bronchitis. I've been administered the Sacrament of Death three times for it.

My second marriage had a lot to do with alcohol.

Like many alcoholics, I was a staggering woman in a chic apartment, sick and utterly disgusting.

I'd never been in play long enough for the flowers to die in the dressing room.

I am responsible for no one but myself.

Radio is truly the theater of the mind. The listener constructs the sets, colors them from his own palette, and sculpts and costumes the characters who perform in them.

I find it next to impossible to remain politely silent when people prate to me about the glory of being given another chance to live happily ever after!

Alcohol is a very patient drug. It will wait for the alcoholic to pick it up one more time.

It is a remarkably beautiful piece of home furnishing, the Oscar. I used to keep it up in front of a mirror so that it looked like two.

My anger made me drink as an escape from reality, a way of forgetting. But you don't know when the medicinal effect ends and the poisoning begins ... This is my sixth year of sobriety. Overcoming alcoholism has been my greatest challenge and my greatest reward.

It is said that people learn to hate each other because of little things ... not big ones. I know I have always learned to love because of little things ... I'm not at all sure that there are any big ones.

I was taught to be anti-Jewish.

I think The Exorcist was the hardest work I've ever done.

There are zillions of people who say that alcoholism is a disease, but not many of them believe it.

I cannot sustain hate for longer than a couple of years.

I can only know what love is insofar as I can feel it.

I loved playing the part of the feisty Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker.

I believe in joy, but I believe in the flip-side, agony.

Everything edible is fried in Texas! Or it is buried in the ground to cook before it is eaten ... Texas food should be forbidden! 'The steaks at night are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas!' And they are always afloat in grease. Next morning you are served a smaller steak, which serves as a platform for two fried eggs ... all of this afloat in the same grease! 'Chicken, you say? You bet! Comin' up!' Same grease! They are right. Comin' up! For hours afterwards. I couldn't believe the crust of an apple pie! Same grease!

Only a certain breed of actor should ever even try to work for Orson Welles. I'm glad I'm one of that breed.

I have always had a lot more trouble with my truths than with my deceits.

Nobody understands that by the time the addiction has set in the alcoholic is mandated to drink ... he cannot not drink! Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, 'Jiminy Cricket, I feel sensational! My life is really in great shape! I think I'll become an alcoholic!' I firmly believe that when a shaking-to-pieces alcoholic says he needs a drink or he will die, he means it.

At awards time, The Exorcist was nominated in 11 categories, everybody but the janitor was up for an Oscar. There was no category for what I did.

The Irish ... are full of the fear of the Lord and the joy of living, and they don't know how to combine the two, but they'll sure have a good time trying.

I'm glad I am a woman who once danced naked in the Mediterranean Sea at midnight.

A rich man can afford to be generous to many.

Young Jimmy Dean fell off the world as suddenly as he had come.

Aside from my son, no person has ever shown for me the gentle concern I knew from Governor Adlai Stevenson.

I don't think the Hollywood community is interested in what I can do. That's all right. I've never looked for a job in my life, and I'm not going to start now. I have plenty to keep me busy.

With two leftover husbands to account for, my wicked soul has just about shriveled and died.

The great people I've met always have time for the niceties.

Like so many other recovered alcoholics, I am to this day bewildered that it took so long for me to understand that there was no such animal as 'social drinking' for me; that it had nothing to do with my willpower or self-respect or moral fiber, that it was a simple biochemical intolerance to a drug.

I have reached a state in life where I can buy a whole house full of chairs and can bump into them until they are black and blue.

Most people call me Mercy. I like it.