A biography for Richard Burtonhasn’t been written yet.
“I grew up among heroes who went down the pit, who played rugby, told stories, sang songs of war.”
“How strange are the tricks of memory, which, often hazy as a dream about the most important events of a man's life, religiously preserve the merest trifles.”
“I've done the most awful rubbish in order to have somewhere to go in the morning.”
“If I had a chance for another life, I would certainly choose a better complexion.”
“I've made more millions than I can count. But you know, it's a faerie gold - the tax people take most of it, and the rest goes to people you need to stay alive, places to live, conveyances to get from here to there.”
“I hate myself and my face in particular.”
“'The Robe' was lousy but an almighty hit. I was dull as ditchwater and an almighty flop.”
“It is impossible to tell you what is consisted in the act of love.”
“Every word I write I suspect the next day.”
“How terrible a thing time is.”
“What an extraordinary world it is.”
“You reach the top of the heap, but it's a circle, and you slip on the down side, maybe for years. You get scared.”
“False friendship, like the ivy, decays and ruins the walls it embraces; but true friendship gives new life and animation to the object it supports.”
“All the bad things that have ever happened to me have always happened in Rome.”
“An actor is something less than a man, while an actress is something more than a woman.”
“The Welsh are all actors. It's only the bad ones who become professional.”
“If you're going to make rubbish, be the best rubbish in it.”
“I'm so weak at saying no.”
“You've got to swank in Hollywood.”
“I don't have tremendous physical vitality since I had a neck operation, and I'm more aware than I used to be of the tedium of acting.”