Quotes

I admire education so much. Intelligence, erudition. But this is just where I want to be. I have respect for skill, for craft, the way the vaudevillians did. I adored Liberace. He and my sister drew attention to themselves with sequins and rhinestones, which I love in the right role. But it is a very small club, the people I want to be associated with. The life I want is not special in any sense of the word. The approval I've worked for is in very small print. I drive a Honda, I don't wear jewelry. I guess, in that way, I'm like my mother.

I wish my sister [Gypsy Rose Lee] hadn't died at an early age. That she could have had the exquisite joy of growing old. It's just not fair to be cheated out of that.

Everybody died. My sister, my mother, my husband. Almost all at the same time. I have no family nearby, I don't have anyone, I guess, to depend on. It turns out I've always been the one. People think you're so self-sufficient if you're good at what you do. It gets you the title of a strong woman and being one can be many things. It attracts people who need strength. I'm not against that. Everything good feeds back.

I wasn't the beauty mother dreamed of. When I finally left, I said, "Look at me, Mom. I'm not dainty. I'm not a baby. It's all gone. Where do I go now? Because I am a gawky 12-year-old with no education. I'm not cute". The numbers I had learned to do weren't the style of the day. Let vaudeville die. I didn't want to die with it. But she was convinced vaudeville would come back. And I said, "I know I'm only 12 years old, but there is something out there better than this".

I was never in an amateur contest in my life, like the opening scene in Gypsy (1962). That hurt me so.

My sister was beautiful and clever - and ruthless. My mother was endearing and adorable - and lethal. They were the same person. I was the fool of the family. The one who thought I really was loved for me, for myself.