"The trouble with the world is that it's always one drink behind."

"Acting is experience with something sweet behind it."

"It's been misspelled a lot. He decided on it. It's not Bog-ey. He signed with an -ie. And that's good enough for me." -

[On Lauren Bacall] "She's a real Joe. You'll fall in love with her like everybody else."

[attributed last words] "I should never have switched from scotch to martinis."

[On the House Un-American Activities Committee] "They'll nail anyone who ever scratched his ass during the National Anthem."

"I came out here with one suit and everybody said I looked like a bum. Twenty years later Marlon Brando came out with only a sweatshirt and the town drooled over him. That shows how much Hollywood has progressed."

"A hotdog at the ballpark is better than a steak at the Ritz."

"I'm a one-woman man and I always have been. I guess I'm old-fashioned. May be that's why I like old-fashioned women, the kind who stays in the house playing 'Roamin' in the Gloamin'. They make a man think he's a man and they're glad of it."

"When the heavy, full of crime and bitterness, grabs his wounds and talks about death and taxes in a husky voice, the audience is his and his alone."

[about himself] "Democrat in politics, Episcopalian by upbringing, dissenter by disposition."

"I can't say I ever loved my mother, I admired her."

"I don't approve of the John Waynes and the Gary Coopers saying 'Shucks, I ain't no actor -- I'm just a bridge builder or a gas station attendant.' If they aren't actors, what the hell are they getting paid for? I have respect for my profession. I worked hard at it."

"The only good reason to have money is this: so that you can tell any SOB in the world to go to hell."

"I hate funerals. They aren't for the guy who's dead. They're for the guys who are left alive and enjoy mourning."

"The whole world is three drinks behind. If everybody in the world would take three drinks, we would have no trouble."

"Acting is like sex: you either do it and don't talk about it, or you talk about it and don't do it. That's why I'm always suspicious of people who talk too much about either."

"The only thing you owe the public is a good performance."

"You're not a star until they can spell your name in Karachi."

"I made more lousy pictures than any actor in history."

[On the untrained beefcake stars of the early 1950s, many of them picked up for screen tests from sidewalks and gas stations] "Shout 'gas' around the studios today, and half the young male stars will come running."

"Do I subscribe to the [Laurence Olivier] school of acting? Ah, nuts. I'm an actor. I just do what comes naturally."

"I don't hurt the industry. The industry hurts itself, by making so many lousy movies - as if General Motors deliberately put out a bad car."

[On Ingrid Bergman] "I didn't do anything I've never done before, but when the camera moves in on that Bergman face, and she's saying she loves you, it would make anybody feel romantic."