Katharine Hepburn

If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.

Life is hard. After all, it kills you.

I have many regrets, and I'm sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret... if you have any sense, and if you don't regret them, maybe you're stupid.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

If you want to give up the admiration of thousands of men for the distain of one, go ahead, get married.

Acting is the most minor of gifts. After all, Shirley Temple could do it when she was four.

Plain women know more about men than beautiful women do.

I think most of the people involved in any art always secretly wonder whether they are really there because they're good or there because they're lucky.

Acting is a nice childish profession - pretending you're someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.

The average Hollywood film star's ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman and have a French boyfriend.

To be loved is very demoralizing.

Enemies are so stimulating.

It would be a terrific innovation if you could get your mind to stretch a little further than the next wisecrack.

As for me, prizes are nothing. My prize is my work.

Only the really plain people know about love - the very fascinating ones try so hard to create an impression that they soon exhaust their talents.

Marriage is a series of desperate arguments people feel passionately about.

Without discipline, there's no life at all.

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get - only with what you are expecting to give - which is everything.

Never complain. Never explain.

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.

We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers - but never blame yourself. It's never your fault. But it's always your fault, because if you wanted to change you're the one who has got to change.

If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married.

Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting. And you don't do that by sitting around.

Trying to be fascinating is an asinine position to be in.

It's a rather rude gesture, but at least it's clear what you mean.

When I started out, I didn't have any desire to be an actress or to learn how to act. I just wanted to be famous.

Being a housewife and a mother is the biggest job in the world, but if it doesn't interest you, don't do it - I would have made a terrible mother.

Why slap them on the wrist with feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer.

It's a business you go into because you're an egocentric. It's a very embarrassing profession.

I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun.

If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.

To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time.

I never realized until lately that women were supposed to be the inferior sex.

Dressing up is a bore. At a certain age, you decorate yourself to attract the opposite sex, and at a certain age, I did that. But I'm past that age.

Death will be a great relief. No more interviews.

My greatest strength is common sense. I'm really a standard brand - like Campbell's tomato soup or Baker's chocolate.

It's life isn't it? You plow ahead and make a hit. And you plow on and someone passes you. Then someone passes them. Time levels.