Ava Gardner

“God knows I've got so many frailties myself, I ought to be able to understand and forgive them in others. But I don't.”

“I was born with good health and a strong body and spent years abusing them.”

“It's fine being stared at as a pretty girl, but not as a freak. When I tried to make myself ugly, they said, 'Oh, she's lost her looks.'”

“When you get to be my age, baby, you have to pay time more respect.”

“When you have to face up to the fact that marriage to the man you love is really over, that's very tough, sheer agony. In that kind of harrowing situation, I always go away and cut myself off from the world. Also, I sober up immediately when there is genuine bad news in my life; I never face it with alcohol in my brain. I just rented a house in Palm Springs and sat there and just suffered for a couple of weeks. I suffered there until I was strong enough to face it.”

“I go on tremendous health kicks - exercise, yogurt, no booze. Of course, I smoke too much.”

“I never played a woman who was smarter than me.”

“I think the main reason my marriages failed is that I always loved too well but never wisely.”

“I fell down in Hyde Park with a friend who'd had a hip operation, and neither of us could get up again. People must have thought we were a couple of drunks rolling around and walked on by.”

“I hate journalists. I don't trust them.”

“It's a shame that it didn't work out with Mick. I was hopelessly in love with him.”

“Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.”

“And the news got worse. It appeared that there was this whole other person Jesus Christ whose birthday a lot of people tended to confuse with mine. I was personally outraged. It was a long time before I forgave the Lord for that.”

“It's a pity nobody believes in simple lust anymore.”

“Mama, you know, poor baby, she'd had her family all finished: four daughters and a couple of sons, and suddenly, I arrived in her midlife on Christmas Eve 1922.”

“To be possessed when you are a child is just a wonderful feeling. It makes you feel safe. It makes you feel loved. But later if anyone tried to possess me - oh boy, I was out of there.”

“I have only one rule in acting - trust the director and give him heart and soul.”

“I wish to live to 150 years old, but the day I die, I wish it to be with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other.”

“Sex isn't all that important, but it is when you love someone very much.”

“Mickey - the smallest husband I ever had and the biggest mistake I ever made - well, that year, it was.”