Lucille Ball Quotes

I don't know how to tell a joke. I never tell jokes. I can tell stories that happened to me ... anecdotes. But never a joke. ~ Lucille Ball

I would rather regret the things I have done than the things I have not ~ Lucille Ball

jenna had felt sexy-funny, like lucille ball with flour streaks on her face, a crumb-covered apron that didn't exactly flatter her, and yet nick had kissed her like a prom king falling for the reinvented girl in a movie. ~ Emily Franklin

I don't think you should write a book until you tell the absolute truth. You can't do that until you're 85, and I don't want to live that long. I've always prided myself on knowing when to get off, and I hope it works out that way. ~ Lucille Ball

I would rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done. ~Lucille Ball ~ K. Langston

I hate failure and that divorce was a Number One failure in my eyes. It was the worst period of my life. Neither Desi nor I have been the same since, physically or mentally. ~ Lucille Ball

Whether we're prepared or not, life has a habit of thrusting situations upon us. ~ Lucille Ball

I think knowing what you cannot do is more important than knowing what you can. ~ Lucille Ball

I'm not funny. What I am is brave. ~ Lucille Ball

One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn't pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself. ~ Lucille Ball

You see much more of your children once they leave home. ~ Lucille Ball

I remember the only time I ever saw my mother cry. I was eating apricot pie.
I remember how much I used to stutter.
I remember the first time I saw television. Lucille Ball was taking ballet lessons.
I remember Aunt Cleora who lived in Hollywood. Every year for Christmas she sent my brother and me a joint present of one book.
I remember a very poor boy who had to wear his sister's blouse to school.
I remember shower curtains with angel fish on them.
I remember very old people when I was very young. Their houses smelled funny.
I remember daydreams of being a singer all alone on a big stage with no scenery, just one spotlight on me, singing my heart out, and moving my audience to total tears of love and affection.
I remember waking up somewhere once and there was a horse staring me in the face.
I remember saying "thank you" in reply to "thank you" and then the other person doesn't know what to say.
I remember how embarrassed I was when other children cried.
I remember one very hot summer day I put ice cubes in my aquarium and all the fish died.
I remember not understanding why people on the other side of the world didn't fall off. ~ Joe Brainard

Many of the most accomplished people of our era were considered by experts to have no future. Jackson Pollock, Marcel Proust, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Lucille Ball, and Charles Darwin were all thought to have little potential for their chosen fields. ~ Carol S. Dweck

I feel sorry for young people today who feel so alone that they have to mate with their first crush. It shocks me that so many young brides are pregnant at the alter. When you have kids late in life, you appreciate them more. They keep you young, and you see the world through better eyes. You can give your children a finer sense of values, too, because if you're lucky, you own values have improved with time. ~ Lucille Ball

I took a couple of classes in clowning, but that was more like Lucille Ball kind of slapstick, not Ringling Brothers. But we had to do things silently, and the teacher would do this running commentary. 'Does this make Clown sad? Oh, Clown doesn't like that, does Clown?' Always 'Clown.' Never a name. ~ June Diane Raphael

I'm not sure that I want to be without some lack of confidence. If you are too sure of yourself, you don't grow. You may feel confident in some things, but other fields come up as a challenge. And if you don't anticipate trouble, you will be in trouble. ~ Lucille Ball

I always knew I was going to be successful in some way with films. I don't know why. I had no particular talent, but I always knew I was going to be sitting in a dining room with Lucille Ball and at a cocktail party with Bette Davis. ~ Robert Osborne

The first thing I think of when I hear the name of Lucille Ball is a Hollywood legend. I have fond memories of growing up at her house, but she was a different person off the set than she was on the set. ~ Keith Thibodeaux

Responsibility is the ability to respond. ~ Lucille Ball

French martinis or lemon drops or cosmos and impromptu viewings of Auntie Mame (the Rosalind Russell version, not the Lucille Ball version) or Steel Magnolias. ~ Kristen Ashley

Politics should be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage. ~ Lucille Ball

I cured myself of shyness when it finally occurred to me that people didn't think about me half as much as I gave them credit for. The truth was, nobody gave a damn. Like most teenagers, I was far too self-centered. When I stopped being prisoner to what I worried was others' opinions of me, I became more confident and free. ~ Lucille Ball

Light and funny has a more compelling quality when you're younger. But I haven't abandoned the genre: I love falling down; I love Lucille Ball. It's just that a lot of those stories revolve around problems that I can't convincingly portray at this age. ~ Julia Roberts

I dyed my hair this crazy red to bid for attention. It has become a trademark, and I've got to keep it this way. ~ Lucille Ball

Imagine the talented love-child of Andr Previn and Lucille Ball. ~ Scott Simon

TV actress Lucille Ball once remarked, 'I'd rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I've not done.' This ~ Ashwin Sanghi

Remember to recognize the small successes that you will have. Don't let the brightness of that big goal blind you to what happens on the way toward the goal. Meet one wave at a time and enjoy what progress you make. I want you please not to be taken up in the undertow of pessimism. ~ Lucille Ball

I'd rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I have not. ~ Lucille Ball

In life, all good things come hard, but wisdom is the hardest to come by. ~ Lucille Ball

A man who correctly guesses a woman's age may be smart, but he's not very bright. ~ Lucille Ball

I've seen 'Mork & Mindy' a couple times. Robin Williams amazes me. And I love Gary Coleman. He puts me away. He puts everybody away. ~ Lucille Ball

My ideal of womanhood has always been the pioneer woman who fought and worked at her husband's side. She bore the children, kept the home fires burning; she was the hub of the family, the
planner and the dreamer. ~ Lucille Ball

You spell Bob Hope C-L-A-S-S. ~ Lucille Ball

My mother is from another time - the funniest person to her is Lucille Ball; that's what she loves. A lot of times she tells me she doesn't know what I'm talking about. I know if I wasn't her son and she was flipping through the TV and saw me, she would just keep going. ~ Steven Wright

[Lucille Ball]'s such a TV icon it's hard for some to separate the two Lucys - the gorgeous, snappy actress of film and the wacky, slapstick queen of television. On TV she was a middle-aged housewife, on film she was a dazzling beauty. The difficulty with her movie career wasn't that she was bad or not up to the roles. Quite the contrary: They were rarely up to her. ~ Ray Hagen

How to do half-hour comedy innovatively is something I do pride myself on. We invented it with 'I Love Lucy.' ~ Lucille Ball

The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age. ~ Lucille Ball

I never thought I was funny. I don't THINK funny. ~ Lucille Ball

Luck? Luck is hard work - and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't. ~ Lucille Ball

Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead. ~ Lucille Ball

TV started for me just as a means of keeping my husband Desi off the road. He'd been on tour with his band since he got out of the Army, and we were in our 11th year of marriage and wanted to have children. ~ Lucille Ball

Television is the quickest form of recognition in the world. ~ Lucille Ball

The girls that I grew up with, and my friends and I, we just never had interests in common. I loved comedy. I loved Saturday Night Live, Gilda Radner, Lucille Ball, and Goldie Hawn movies. I just wanted to laugh. I liked women in comedy, and I liked male comics as I got a little older. My interests just never matched up with other girls'. ~ Amy Schumer

I loved being a redhead! I always wanted to try it. I was obsessed with Lucille Ball growing up. I really wanted to try it but I always thought that doing it would ruin my hair. ~ Tracee Ellis Ross

I'm sometimes scared of everything that has happened to us. We didn't think Desilu Productions would grow so big. We merely wanted to be together and have two children. ~ Lucille Ball

I'm happy that I have brought laughter because I have been shown by many the value of it in so many lives, in so many ways. ~ Lucille Ball

I believe that we're as happy in life as we make up our minds to be. ~ Lucille Ball

One of the greatest gifts to mankind is laughter, and one of the greatest gifts to laughter is Lucille Ball. God has her now but thanks to television, we'll have her forever. ~ Bob Hope

Blonde movie stars in the 1950s seem to have been pretty much divided between breathy bombshells (Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield) and slim, elegant swans (Grace Kelly, Eva Marie Saint). Producers didn't really know what to do with Judy Holliday, a brilliant, versatile actress who simply didn't fit into any easy category. Though she left behind a handful of delightful films, one can't help feeling a sense of waste that her gifts were not better handled by Hollywood (or, for that matter, by Broadway). Perhaps, like Lucille Ball, Judy Holliday would have blossomed with a really good sitcom; but, unlike Lucy, she never got one. ~ Eve Golden

If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. The more things you do, the more you can do. Lucille Ball

(Source:
brainyquote dot com)
. ~ Lucille Ball

There's a quote of hers [Lucille Ball] that I've always loved: 'I guess I would rather regret the things I've done than to regret the things I've never done. ~ Carol Burnett

Plasma on the wall/Write my name on your heart like I'm Lucille Ball/But love changes, a thug changes/And best friends become strangers ~ Ras Kass

I will never do another TV series. It couldn't top I Love Lucy, and I'd be foolish to try. In this business, you have to know when to get off. ~ Lucille Ball

The more things you do, the more you can do. ~ Lucille Ball

In December, Angela Lansbury had been signed to play Raymond's mother, the arch-villainess Eleanor Shaw Iselin. Apparently, Sinatra originally wanted Lucille Ball for the role, a fascinating casting notion, as Tom Santopietro points out: "As Ball aged, she grew into an increasingly hardened performer, losing all traces of the vulnerability that so informed her brilliant multiyear run on television's I Love Lucy. The resulting quality of toughness would have suited the role of [Eleanor] very well, although it is anyone's guess whether or not Ball would have felt comfortable delving into the dark recesses of [her] warped character. ~ James Kaplan

I regret the passing of the studio system. I was very appreciative of it because I had no talent. ~ Lucille Ball

You won't be happy, whatever you do, unless you're comfortable with your own conscience. Keep your head up, keep your shoulders back, keep your self-respect, be nice, be smart. And remember that there are practically no "overnight" successes. ~ Lucille Ball

Ability is of little account without opportunity. ~ Lucille Ball

It's fun to get a message on the phone service that Lucille Ball or Burt Reynolds called, and play it very blase by asking, 'Anyone else?' ~ Charles Nelson Reilly

Use a make-up table with everything close at hand and don't rush; otherwise you'll look like a patchwork quilt. ~ Lucille Ball

I'd like to play a mixture of Lucille Ball meets Murphy Brown meets Glenn Close on 'Damages,' to keep a little bit of the darkness in there. I like dark comedy a lot. ~ Joelle Carter

So many people: Lucille Ball is the earliest incarnation of a woman I thought was funny, Joan Rivers, Roseanne, Carol Burnett, Gilda Radnor, down to current times, where you have Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, and Kristen Wiig. ~ Chelsea Peretti

Some of the most gifted people I've ever met or read about are homosexual. How can you knock it? ~ Lucille Ball

We don't have to relive the sad and bad memories of Christmas Past. We can create new Christmas memories in the present for the future. ~ Tom North

I wanted to get out of the pictures and stay home so that I could have children. ~ Lucille Ball

It wasn't love at first sight. It took a full five minutes. ~ Lucille Ball

I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done. ~ Lucille Ball

Growing up I wanted to be a mixture of Audrey Hepburn and Lucille Ball. Apparently I told my mum when I was eight that I wanted to be an actor. ~ Dianna Agron

Luck? I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: hard work - and realizing what opportunity is and what isn't. ~ Lucille Ball

I used humor to avoid being picked on as a kid. Or I would try and make my parents laugh, so I wouldn't get in trouble. But as a kid, I would watch Flip Wilson and I would memorize his whole routine, listen to Bill Cosby's records constantly, Steve Martin, Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball. I just drank that stuff up and loved it. ~ Wendi McLendon-Covey

God what an outfield,' he says. 'What a left field.' He looks up at me, and I look down at him. 'This must be heaven,' he says.
No. It's Iowa,' I reply automatically. But then I feel the night rubbing softly against my face like cherry blossoms; look at the sleeping girl-child in my arms, her small hand curled around one of my fingers; think of the fierce warmth of the woman waiting for me in the house; inhale the fresh-cut grass small that seems locked in the air like permanent incense; and listen to the drone of the crowd, as below me Shoelss Joe Jackson tenses, watching the angle of the distant bat for a clue as to where the ball will be hit.
I think you're right, Joe,' I say, but softly enough not to disturb his concentration. ~ W.P. Kinsella

I used to store my anger and it affected my play. Now I get it out. I'm never rude to my playing partner. I'm very focused on the ball. Then it's over. ~ Helen Alfredsson

I always tried to watch the pitcher and his complete windup from the moment he had the ball in his glove all the way through his motion, and tried to follow it all the way out of his hand, all the way to home plate. ~ Harmon Killebrew

When you visit Gindaco, spend some time watching the cooks make takoyaki before ordering, because it's an amazing free show. The shop has an industrial-sized takoyaki griddle with dozens of hot cast iron wells, each one about an inch and a half in diameter. The cook squirts the grill with plenty of vegetable oil. She dunks a pitcher into a barrel of pancake batter and sloshes it over the grill, then strews the whole area with negi, ginger, and huge, tender octopus chunks. Some of Gindaco's purple tentacles are two inches long. This cooks for a little while, then the cook tops off the grill with more batter until it's nearly full.
Up to this point, the process looks haphazard, but then she whips out the skewers. Using only the same slender bamboo skewers you'd use for making kebabs, she begins slicing through the batter in a grid pattern and forming a ball in each well. Somehow she herds this ocean of batter into a grid of takoyaki in a minute or two.
The takoyaki cost all of 500 yen, and the price includes a wooden serving boat that you can take home and reuse as a bath toy if you haven't gotten too much sauce on it. A Gindaco takoyaki is a brilliant morsel: full of flavor from the negi and ginger, crispy on the outside and juicy within. Takoyaki also stay mouth-searingly hot inside for longer than you can stand to wait, so be careful. ~ Matthew Amster-Burton

I need my skull in one piece. Crushing it would be like taking a wrecking ball to some secret museum before anyone ever got to see what's inside. ~ Jandy Nelson

The Ball Poem"

What is the boy now, who has lost his ball.
What, what is he to do? I saw it go
Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then
Merrily over - there it is in the water!
No use to say 'O there are other balls':
An ultimate shaking grief fixes the boy
As he stands rigid, trembling, staring down
All his young days into the harbour where
His ball went. I would not intrude on him,
A dime, another ball, is worthless. Now
He senses first responsibility
In a world of possessions. People will take balls,
Balls will be lost always, little boy,
And no one buys a ball back. Money is external.
He is learning, well behind his desperate eyes,
The epistemology of loss, how to stand up
Knowing what every man must one day know
And most know many days, how to stand up
And gradually light returns to the street,
A whistle blows, the ball is out of sight.
Soon part of me will explore the deep and dark
Floor of the harbour . . I am everywhere,
I suffer and move, my mind and my heart move
With all that move me, under the water
Or whistling, I am not a little boy. ~ John Berryman

I appreciate this moment in time ... ball players and actors be knowing my rhymes ~ Common

He leaned forward to inspect her closer. "Is that all hair?"
... Sudden, overwhelming panic clawed up Cress's throat. With a squeak, she ducked out of view of the camera and scrambled beneath the desk. Her back struck the wall with a thud that rattled her teeth. She crouched there, skin burning hot and pulse thundering as she took in the room before her - the room that he was now seeing too, with the rumpled bedcovers and the mustached man on all the screens telling her to grab her imaginary partner and swing them around.
"Wha - where'd she go?" Thorne's voice came to her through the screen.
"Honestly, Thorne." A girl. Linh Cinder? "Do you ever think before you speak?"
"What? What did I say?"
" 'Is that all hair?' "
"Did you see it? It was like a cross between a magpie nest and ball of yarn after it's been mauled by a cheetah."
A beat. Then, "A cheetah?"
"It was the first big cat that came to mind. ~ Marissa Meyer

It's about time for Lindell White to get back on the floor, expose himself, and get the ball in a scoring position. ~ Billy Packer

Either you're going to shoot us or you're not. The ball always lands on red or black, never both. ~ V. Alexander

Recipe: Honeybear Pie For the pie crust Flour - 2 cups Salt - 1 teaspoon Butter - 1/2 cup Apple Cider Vinegar - 2 tablespoons Water - 6 tablespoons To make two 9" crusts, combine the flour & salt & butter in a food processor. Add the vinegar and water and form into a ball. Wrap in plastic and chill for 30 minutes. For the pie filling Apples ~ J.M. Klaire

Tizzy squawked, and he bounced like a ball on the floor.
"I completely forgot; Santa said something more.
He said that a book gives your very thoughts wings,
That carry you off to see wonderful things,
That lift you aloft, throughout time, throughout space
To every era and every place! ~ Dorothea Jensen

Having Willie Stargell on your ball club is like having a diamond ring on your finger. ~ Chuck Tanner

There ain't enough happens in soccer. It's like watching twenty-two hair models kick a ball around for what seems like six months and then one of them falls over and the ball goes in the goal. ~ Warren Ellis

Much of the attraction of the cult has to do with the grace of an early and romantic death. George Orwell once observed that if Napoleon Bonaparte had been cut down by a musket ball as he entered Moscow, he would have been remembered as the greatest general since Alexander. And not only did Guevara die before his ideals did, he died in such a manner as to inspire something akin to superstition. He rode among the poor of the altiplano on a donkey. He repeatedly foresaw and predicted the circumstances of his own death. He was spurned and betrayed by those he claimed to set free. He was by calling a healer of the sick. The photographs of his corpse, bearded and half-naked and lacerated, make an irresistible comparison with paintings of the deposition from Calvary. There is a mystery about his last resting place. Alleged relics are in circulation. There have even been sightings ... . ~ Christopher Hitchens

You decide you'll wait for your pitch. As the ball starts toward the plate, you think about your stance. And then you think about your swing. Then you realize that the ball that went by you for a strike was your pitch. ~ Bobby Murcer

I definitely see the good in people. Certainly in my own life I strive to be somebody who is functional and well adjusted and can face conflict in a non-emotional and non-destructive way, and those are the people I try to surround myself with in my life. But as characters, they bore me. ~ Alan Ball

Every word that is spoken and sung here (the Cabaret Voltaire) represents at least this one thing: that this humiliating age has not succeeded in winning our respect. ~ Hugo Ball

Slow thinkers are part of the game too. Some of these slow thinkers can hit a ball a long way. ~ Alvin Dark

I used to be a rabid reader, but now it's scripts or nothing - network television is quite relentless, and you can't drop the ball. ~ Robert Carlyle

Nothing belongs here," I said. ~ Jena Ball

Lucille always loved a strong breeze. She said it was nature's way of blowing away our sorrows.'
Just then another gust of wind whipped around us. Aunt Tootie smiled. I smiled too. ~ Beth Hoffman

I'm like a point guard. Barack is about ideas and questions, and I don't have all the answers. He trusts me to pass the ball to others to give him points of view. ~ Mark Lippert

The game, the game: here we go again. All glory to it, all things I am and own because of Roller Ball Murder. ~ William Neal Harrison

When you have an injury in your forearm, it affects the command of your pitches. I would yank pitches down away, or they were staying up. I'd go to accelerate, but everything would come forward except the ball. The ball was staying behind. When you have an inconsistent release point like that, it's impossible to throw a changeup. ~ Phil Humber

I think the Americans don't understand that this is a complicated new ball game. People everywhere have seen that a few determined people who were not scared to die can create a huge upheaval within a major superpower. ~ Imran Khan

I quit acting when I was 11 because I was cast as a bouncing ball in 'Alice in Wonderland,' and I felt slighted and wounded. ~ Lena Dunham

... I will take a long shower, as the shower is the only place I will have any privacy. In the stall I will get down on my knees and weep, letting the water run over my body, praying to get better, praying not to hurt myself any more than I'm already hurting, praying that this loss, that this whole time, will move over me, through me, like a dark storm passing over a great plane. A great plain which is, essentially, my soul. A soul which is neither light nor dark, neither wholly alone nor wholly with any other, certainly not with God, just flat, open, deathless, and free. Curled up in a wet ball on the tile floor I will hear myself say, something in me is dying. I no longer know to whom I'm talking. ~ Maggie Nelson

You must respect people and work hard to be in shape. And I used to train very hard. When the others players went to the beach after training, I was there kicking the ball. ~ Pele

Golf challenges you mentally at any age, and when you become my age, it's a challenge physically to try to make your game work as well as it ever did. That's close to impossible, but that doesn't keep you from trying to hit the ball where you used to hit it and make the putts you used to make all the time. ~ Arnold Palmer