Top 44 Elaine Stritch Quotes

My idea of serenity – that wonderful word that everybody’s trying to get into their life – is call-waiting.

All of the writing on ’30 Rock’ is a joy to go into. It’s pretty hot stuff.

I don’t have to go to a doctor and have my face changed. It terrifies me that women do that.

Fans recognize me all over the place. But the second you need anything, they’re never around! They’re like the police!

Certain type of actresses get younger instead of older. I always say, ‘Only ingenues age.’

I never thought about living in New York. I just thought it was great.

I don’t want to see a movie twice. I don’t want to do anything twice.

I think I have more humour in me than anger. But those two things are great bed-fellows, performance-wise.

I could have made a lot of money doing ‘Golden Girls,’ and I would have been good. But the image of it! And for me to work with Betty White every day would be like taking cyanide.

Why haven’t I made more movies? Nobody asked me.

I can’t explain chemistry. I really can’t. I haven’t got a clue what it’s all about. It just happens. It’s like falling in love. You can’t explain why you fall in love or explain why it’s this particular person.

I don’t think there’s any thrill in the world like doing work you’re good at.

Audiences are not strangers to me. They’re the best friends I’ve got in my life.

Betty White is probably a very nice woman.

There’s something about it that makes sense, Lent. You give something up, and everything’s more joyful.

I tell the truth, and it has gotten me into a lot of trouble. My dad used to say to me, ‘If you tell the truth all day long, you will end up in jail.’

When I want to do something badly enough, I do it, but there is a practical side of me that thinks I should be paid fairly.

I think taking care of yourself, health-wise, in every way, is a 100 percent winner.

I think being boring is just the worst sin of all time.

Fear is the base of what everybody does wrong in their lives.

I’m a hotel baby, absolutely: it’s hard to think of a hotel I haven’t stayed in.

I just serve others through entertaining. That’s when I am happy.

What I want to understand is what I am talking about on the stage. What I don’t want to understand is what the government is talking about when the government tells me about taxes.

The people in New York – their humor is on a level that goes, uh, very deep, you know?

All you have to do is say, ‘I’m going home,’ and you’re the most popular girl at the party.

I love holidays in New York. I love ’em. I want to celebrate something all the time, and New York has holidays for every day of the week, practically. I like holidays in New York City.

I like celebrities. I love people who are famous. Always have.

There’s something that really frightens me – and that’s fear.

I don’t have a great talent for explaining myself in acting because I can’t explain it.

Talent is seductive.

I compare Stephen Sondheim with humor, because humor is unanalyzable. You can’t analyze humor. You just have to get through it.

Honestly, this is a big thing to say, but I don’t think I’ve ever been bored. If I even get an inkling of it, I split.

New Yorkers stop me on the street all the time to say, ‘You’re terrific! You’re the nuts!’

I don’t want to see my family all the time, and they’re delighted, I’m sure, to be aware of that.

I have no intention of retiring. Even my blood sugar is better when I’m working.

Diabetes is a lousy, lousy disease.

For me, going to London is like coming home. In fact, I’ve often entertained the idea of ending my days there.

My movie career – if such a thing even exists – is laughable.

I’m loaded with talent.

You have to be very, very good looking to get ahead in motion pictures.

Talent is very dangerous. It alienates people.

When the hospital sends for me, when the ambulance comes and I ease my way out of the world, I’d rather be in Detroit, Michigan, than Lenox Hill.

You cannot tell an audience a lie. They know it before you do; before it’s out of your mouth, they know it’s a lie.

Quite frankly I don’t know how to be happy. I have not a clue.