Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.
If I could be granted a wish, I'd shine in your eye like a jewel.
I celebrate everyone's religious holidays. if it's good enough for the righteous, it's good enough for the self-righteous, I always say.
Group conformity scares the pants off me because it's so often a prelude to cruelty towards anyone who doesn't want to - or can't - join the Big Parade.
I try not to drink too much because when I'm drunk, I bite.
I married a German. Every night I dress up as Poland and he invades me.
After thirty, a body has a mind of its own.
I always try to balance the light with the heavy - a few tears of human spirit in with the sequins and the fringes.
I feel like a million tonight - but one at a time.
The worst part of success is trying to find someone who is happy for you.
I bear no grudges. I have a mind that retains nothing.
I wouldn't say I invented tacky, but I definitely brought it to its present high popularity.
A lot of people have no access to beauty. When I was growing up, my mother had only a few pretty things to look at.
Education is my next big thing. When music and art were taken out of the schools, I went berserk!
I made a pact with myself a long time ago: Never watch anything stupider than you. It's helped me a lot.
I'm working my way toward divinity.
I'd make a wonderful Lady Macbeth. I'll wear a pair of platform shoes or something.
Writing a book is not as tough as it is to haul thirty-five people around the country and sweat like a horse five nights a week.
If sex is such a natural phenomenon, how come there are so many books on how to do it?
Rap is poetry set to music. But to me it's like a jackhammer.
I sometimes think I should go back to school to learn French and music, but who would have me?
I hope to keep entertaining in some way until I can't physically entertain any longer. It's what I was born to do, and I love this profession.
My husband calls it winging it - the way I just took what the studios gave me, didn't do my homework and avoided roles that would risk my image.
As an actor, you're supposed to take jobs that will challenge you or force fans to see you in a different light. By the '90s, I wasn't really an actor anymore. I was someone who went on the road with these gigantic concerts.
I got so far away from what they told you in acting class: Do something different. Producers kept offering me the 'Sister Act' movie, but I said, 'My fans don't want to see me in a wimple.' I literally said, 'My fans don't want to see me in a wimple.'
I mean, can I really create a full, three-dimensional character? I don't know anymore. I'm certainly going to try.
I already have a Tony for my Broadway concert in '73. It's one of the most precious things I've won.
I'd never done a straight play before, never, and it was very hard work - really, really hard work. It was dense, really wordy, and I was determined to learn every word of it - not just skip over bits and pieces.
I learned to accept the audience's happiness for me, which is one of the hardest things for me to learn.
I had a hard-scrabble childhood with my parents. I have a lot of baggage. To come down to the footlights and accept the audience's affection inside a Broadway theater - that didn't come easily to me.
When I moved to New York City in 1965, I wanted to be in theater. I was following my Ethel Barrymore dream. But I was too young to be Ethel.
My idea of superwoman is someone who scrubs her own floors.
Through books and photographs, I saw a world that was not my own - and I realized that there was another world. That's why I'm concerned about education, because it helps our children see other worlds.
Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke!
I have my standards. They're low, but I have them.
When it's three o'clock in New York, it's still 1938 in London.
Cherish forever what makes you unique, cuz you're really a yawn if it goes
Find your Light; They can't love you if they can't see you
I didn't belong as a kid, and that always bothered me. If only I'd known that one day my differentness would be an asset, then my early life would have been much easier.
If only I'd known my differentness would be an asset, then my earlier life would have been much easier.
I never know how much of what I say is true.
