Tallulah Bankhead Quotes

Acting is a form of confession.

I have been tight as a tick! Fried as a mink! Stiff as a goat!

My progress reminded me of the horses in The Whip. They raced at the limit of their speed directly toward the audience. But they raced on a treadmill which canceled out their progress.

The less I behave like Whistler's mother the night before, the more I look like her the morning after.

Too many of our countrymen rejoice in stupidity, look upon ignorance as a badge of honor. They condemn everything they don't understand.

[To the critic who wrote a negative review:] I am sitting in the smallest room of the house. Your review is before me. Soon it will be behind me.

Going down on a woman gives me a stiff neck, going down on a man gives me lockjaw and conventional sex gives me claustrophobia.

For acting, darlings, is the world's most perilous trade. Compared with actors, steeple jacks and deep-sea divers lead snug and placid lives.

They say it's the good girls who keep diaries. The bad girls never have the time. Me, I just wanna live a life I'm gonna remember even if I don't write it down.

In my lifetime I've been to bed with men, women, and odd pieces of furniture.

Wracked with a hangover I do my muttering over a Black Velvet, a union of champagne and stout. Don't be swindled into believing there's any cure for a hangover. I've tried them all: iced tomatoes, hot clam juice, brandy peaches. Like the common cold it defies solution. Time alone can stay it. The hair of the dog? That way lies folly. It's as logical as trying to put out a fire with applications of kerosene.

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.

A frozen daiquiri of a scorching afternoon is soothing. It makes living more tolerable.

I have been absolutely hag-ridden with ambition. If I could wish to have anything in the world it would be to be free of ambition.

Codeine . . . bourbon.

Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it.

Will TV kill the theater? If the programs I have seen, save for "Kukla, Fran and Ollie," the ball games and the fights, are any criterion, the theater need not wake up in a cold sweat.

My heart is pure as the driven slush.

(On seeing a former lover for the first time in years) I thought I told you to wait in the car.

Do you know what my ambition is in life? To be without ambition. As far back as I can remember I've been absolutely hag-ridden. I'd like to attain the state of mind that the Indians call Nirvana. That, for me, would happen if I were free of ambition.

They aren't making mirrors like they use to.

Acting is a form of confusion.

I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice. That's what I call a liberal education.

Television could perform a great service in mass education, but there's no indication its sponsors have anything like this on their minds.

It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time.

Here's a rule I recommend: Never practice two vices at once.

I'm not childless, darling. I am childfree.

If I were well behaved, I'd die of boredom.

I'm as pure as the driven slush.

It's one of the tragic ironies of the theatre that only one man in it can count on steady work - the night watchman.

No man worth his salt, no man of spirit and spine, no man for whom I could have any respect, could rejoice in the identification of Tallulah's husband. It's tough enough to be bogged down in a legend. It would be even tougher to marry one.

Acting is the most insecure of all the trades, the most risky. In their professional lifetime most actors rehearse longer than they play, spend more time traipsing from office to office in search of jobs than they rehearse and play combined.

There's less here than meets the eye.

If you know your Bible and your Shakespeare and can shoot craps, you have a liberal education.

There have only been two geniuses in the world - Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare.

Don't be taken in by the guff that critics are killing the theater. Commonly they sin on the side of enthusiasm. Too often they give their blessing to trash.

There is less in this than meets the eye.

I have three phobias ... : I hate going to bed, get up and hate hate being alone.

I've tried several varieties of sex. The conventional position makes me claustrophobic, and the others either give me a stiff neck or lockjaw.

I've had a man and I've had a woman, and there's got to be something better.

In the theater lying is looked upon as an occupational disease.

I have enemies I've never met - that's fame.

I'd like to kiss you, Darling, but I just washed my hair.

My heart is as pure as the driven slush.

I'm not at my best when I moralize or philosophize. Logic is elusive, especially to one who so rarely uses it.

[On being asked in her later years if she were Tallulah:] I'm what's left of her, dahling.

Bette [Davis] and I are good friends. There's nothing I wouldn't say to her face - both of them.

It's unlikely I'll ever submit to a psychiatrist's couch. I don't want some stranger prowling around through my psyche, monkeying with my id. I don't need an analyst to tell me that I have never had any sense of security. Who has?

If you really want to help the American theater, don't be an actress, dahling. Be an audience.

I'd rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.

They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum.

I detest acting because it is sheer drudgery.

Drink reacts on its practitioners in conflicting ways. One brave can knock off a quart of Scotch and look and act as sober as Herbert Hoover. Another, after three Martinis, makes two-cushion carroms off the chaise lounge as he attempts to negotiate the bathroom.

Don't think this has taught me a lesson !

Whatever you have read I have said is almost certainly untrue, except if it is funny, in which case I definitely said it.

I'm the foe of moderation, the champion of excess.

My father warned me about men and booze but he never said anything about women and cocaine.