Quotes

"I remember her as gracious and beautiful. She had stature, but it didn't make her inaccessible. She wasn't somebody you'd poke and tell a dirty joke to, but she gave off a real feeling of warmth" -- actress Eve Plumb, who costarred with Garson in the 1978 TV adaptation of Little Women (1978).

[Speaking in 1990] I'm not a keyhole peeper in real life, so why should I go to the cinema to be a keyhole peeper? Producers should have more courage. People will respond to stories with love and courage and happy endings instead of shockers. I think the mirror should be tilted slightly upward when it's reflecting life - toward the cheerful, the tender, the compassionate, the brave, the funny, the encouraging - and not tilted down to the troubled vistas of conflict.

If you're going to be typed, there are worse moulds in which you can be cast.

All I know about getting something that you want is that there are three essential things: wanting, trying and getting the opportunity, the breaks. None works alone without the others. Wanting is basic. Trying is up to you. And the breaks - I do know this, they always happen.

[speaking in 1968] I've been offered nymphomaniacs, kleptomaniacs, pyromaniacs, homicidal maniacs and just plain maniacs. I think producers felt that after playing a long series of noble and admirable characters there would be quite a lot of shock value in seeing me play something altogether different. But I prefer upbeat stories that send people out of the theater feeling better than they did coming in. It's my cup of tea.

I do wish I could tell you my age but it's impossible. It keeps changing all the time.

Starting out to make money is the greatest mistake in life. Do what you feel you have a flair for doing, and if you are good enough at it, the money will come.

When you can't wait for your ship to come in, you've got to row out to it.

People are always asking me what it was like during the golden years of Hollywood. That was in the 1920s and '30s - which wasn't my period. My period, the '40s and '50s, is what I call the romantic years of Hollywood.