“I’m not funny. What I am is brave. ”
“Luck? I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: Hard work – and realizing what is opportunity and what isn’t.”
“If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. The more things you do, the more you can do.”
“It’s a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.”
“I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than regret the things I haven’t done.”
“In life, all good things come hard, but wisdom is the hardest to come by.”
“How I Love Lucy was born? We decided that instead of divorce lawyers profiting from our mistakes, we’d profit from them.”
“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”
“One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn’t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.”
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
“The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.”
(about the opening night of I Love Lucy) “All I remember about that night was trying to protect my stomach. Lucie had just been born by Caesarean section and I was wearing a huge bandage over my stomach. I was more concerned with that than anything else. When the laughs started coming, I was very relieved. I remember sayin, ‘Whew! It’s working.'”
“Use a make-up table with everything close at hand and don’t rush; otherwise you’ll look like a patchwork quilt.”
“What could I do? I couldn’t dance. I couldn’t sing. I could talk.”
In acting, Lucille Ball rarely made a mistake. However, on one occasion, she stumbled miserably over a speech while filming an episode of I Love Lucy. She broke the tension by finally yelling into the studio audience to her mother, seated in the top row of the bleachers, “Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll get it!”