Quotes

I was at a point where I was ready to say, "I am what I am because of what I am and if you like me I'm grateful, and if you don't, what am I going to do about it?"

Life is here only to be lived so that we can, through life, earn the right to death, which to me is paradise. Whatever it is that will bring me the reward of paradise, I'll do the best I can.

The best way to get most husbands to do something is to suggest that perhaps they're too old to do it.

When [Mel Brooks] told his Jewish mother he was marrying an Italian girl, she said: "Bring her over. I'll be in the kitchen - with my head in the oven".

[of her Mrs. Robinson role in The Graduate (1967)] Film critics said I gave a voice to the fear we all have: that we'll reach a point in our lives, look around and realize that all the things we said we'd do and become will never come to be - and that we're ordinary.

[from 1984] The only reason I'm still not doing "Daughter of Gorilla at Large" is because my personal life had become a shambles. Every picture I did was worse than the last one and every man I was in love with was worse than the last one. I was terribly immature. I was going steadily downhill in terms of self-respect and dignity.

[on John Ford] Marvelous but loony, tearing out pages of the script everywhere.

[1962] When I arrived in town, the movie industry was looking for sexpot glamor girls. I didn't qualify. Nor was I ever offered a top-flight movie. But there isn't any bitterness on my part. I wasn't as good an actress then as I am now.

[on being married to Mel Brooks] When he comes home at night and I hear his key in the lock, I say to myself, "Oh good! The party's about to begin".

I can sit with anybody in a room for an hour, and by the time they leave, automatically I will know the way they talk and the way they move. That's my special art.

When I was in radio, I was Anna St. Raymond; when I was in television, I was Anne Marno; and then in movies I was Anne Bancroft -- if I ever go into burlesque, I've got one picked out: Ruby Pepper.

[Driving to Mexico City for a film] When I was in Mexico on location we had this long drive from the bottom of a mountain all the way to Mexico City. I used to get pretty bored on these drives, so I was shouting out the window, 'Hello, you people - Here I am! You lucky people you!' So then five guys in this car followed us all the way to the hotel! That's the only funny thing that happened to me back then, only it wasn't in Hollywood - it was Mexico. Nothing funny happens in Hollywood.

[on her days as a contract player at Fox] I was seduced by every script. I thought every picture was the best, and that I was Greta Garbo. It was the ability to accept these terrible lies that kept me going.

[about her first husband] That marriage lasted three years, but to tell you the truth, I knew at the end of three days. It was all wrong and it took me those three years to gather up the courage and stop trying and say no.