Elizabeth Taylor

“I feel very adventurous. There are so many doors to be opened, and I’m not afraid to look behind them.”

“Big girls need big diamonds.”

Richard came on the set and sort of sidled over to me and said: “Has anybody ever told you that you’re a very pretty girl?” ‘I thought, Oy gevalt, the great lover, the great wit, the great Welsh intellectual, and he comes out with a corny line like that! But then I noticed his hands were shaking as if he had Saturday night palsy. He had the worst hangover I’d ever seen. And he was obviously terrified of me. I just took pity on him. I realized he really was human. That was the beginning of our affair.

“I really don’t remember much about Cleopatra. There were a lot of other things going on.”

(After she divorced Richard Burton for the second time) “I love Richard Burton with every fiber of my soul, but we can’t be together. We’re too mutually self-destructive.”

“I’ve always admitted that I’m ruled by my passions.”

“People who know me well, call me Elizabeth. I dislike Liz.”

“I’ve only slept with men I’ve been married to. How many women can make that claim?”

“I am a very committed wife. And I should be committed too – for being married so many times.”

“I fell off my pink cloud with a thud.”

(About Michael Jackson) “He is part of my heart. We would do anything for each other.”

(About Marilyn Monroe) “She seemed to have a kind of unconscious glow about her physical self that was innocent, like a child. When she posed nude, it was ‘Gee, I am kind of, you know, sort of dishy,’ like she enjoyed it without being egotistical.”

“Acting is, to me now, artificial. Seeing people suffer is real. It couldn’t be more real. Some people don’t like to look at it in the face because it’s painful. But if nobody does, then nothing gets done.” (2005)

“I don’t entirely approve of some of the things I have done, or am, or have been. But I’m me. God knows, I’m me.”

“I don’t like my voice. I don’t like the way I look. I don’t like the way I move. I don’t like the way I act. I mean, period. So, you know, I don’t like myself.”

“I’m a survivor – a living example of what people can go through and survive.”

“Everything makes me nervous except making films.”

“There’s still so much more to do. I can’t sit back and be complacent, and none of us should be. I get around now in a wheelchair, but I get around.” (2005)

“I’ve been through it all, baby, I’m mother courage.”

“If someone’s dumb enough to offer me a million dollars to make a picture, I’m certainly not dumb enough to turn it down.”

“You find out who your real friends are when you’re involved in a scandal.”

“Put on some lipstick and pull yourself together.”

“I hate being called Liz, because it can sound like such a hiss.”

(About Michael Jackson) “What is a genius? What is a living legend? What is a mega star? Michael Jackson – that’s all. And when you think you know him, he gives you more . . . I think he is one of the finest people to hit this planet, and, in my estimation, he is the true King of Pop, Rock and Soul.”

(on John Wayne) His image had as much impact in the world as many of our presidents have had, but Duke was a great actor, a great humanitarian, but always himself. To be a friend was a lifetime thing.”

(Tweet 7/23/2010) “Hold your horses world. I’ve been hearing all kinds of rumours about someone being cast to play me in a film about Richard and myself. No one is going to play Elizabeth Taylor, but Elizabeth Taylor herself.”

“I believe in mind over matter and doing anything you set your mind on. I, along with the critics, have never taken myself very seriously.”

“Success is a great deodorant.”

“My mother says I didn’t open my eyes for eight days after I was born, but when I did, the first thing I saw was an engagement ring. I was hooked.”

“Some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses.”

In 2009, during a hospital stay, Elizabeth Taylor tweeted to Kathy Ireland: “Thanks Darling for the beautiful flowers and all the prayers. Now can you just get my puppy past security?”

“Never let yourself think beyond your means…mental, emotional or any otherwise.”