Best 37 quotes of Tallulah Bankhead on MyQuotes

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

A Republican. A Republican. That's worse than being a goddamned Communist!

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.

Don't think this has taught me a lesson !

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.

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.

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

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

I detest acting because it is sheer drudgery.

I did what I could to inflate the rumor I was on my way to stardom. What I was on my way to, by any mathematical standards known to man, was oblivion, by way of obscurity.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

I'm the foe of moderation, the champion of excess. If I may lift a line from a die-hard whose identity is lost in the shuffle, 'I'd rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.'

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

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

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

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?

I've been called many things, but never an intellectual.

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.

Of course cocaine is not adictive, darling. I should know, I've been doing it for years.

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

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

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

There have only been two authentic geniuses in the world, Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare and I think you'd better put Shakespeare first, darling.

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.

[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.

[To the man who came up to her at a party and exclaimed effusively, 'Tallulah! I haven't seen you for 41 years!':] I thought I told you to wait in the car.

Working on television is like being shot out of a cannon. They cram you all up with rehearsals, then someone lights a fuse and - .BANG! - there you are in someone's living room.

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.

My heart is pure as the driven slush.

The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner

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