Top 84 Elaine Stritch Quotes December 19, 2020 by Krista Leave a Comment “All you have to do is say, ‘I’m going home,’ and you’re the most popular girl at the party.”― Elaine Stritch“There will always be ladies who lunch. Always. And apparently they live a long time.”― Elaine Stritch“I always say, ‘If you can’t give a reason for the banana peel being in the alley, then don’t have the comic slide over it.’ Do you understand what I mean? First explain how the banana peel got there quickly. And then there’s a reason for all the comedy.”― Elaine Stritch“I can’t explain chemistry. I really can’t. I haven’t got a clue what it’s all about. It just happens. It’s like falling in love. You can’t explain why you fall in love or explain why it’s this particular person.”― Elaine Stritch“My idea of serenity – that wonderful word that everybody’s trying to get into their life – is call-waiting.”― Elaine Stritch“I mention I’m going home, and I’m a star immediately! This used to happen with my boyfriends – as soon as I’d say, ‘I gotta go home now,’ they fell in love.”― Elaine Stritch“I’m funny when I want to be. And I’m even funny when I don’t want to be.”― Elaine Stritch“You have to be very, very good looking to get ahead in motion pictures.”― Elaine Stritch“I am not influenced by other human beings. But I am inspired.”― Elaine Stritch“This age thing is all up to you. It’s like happiness is up to you. You just have to understand what it is before you get it.”― Elaine Stritch“Talent is seductive.”― Elaine Stritch“If I see a great performance on television, onstage, in the movies, I go to work the next day with a renewed energy and less fear. These great artists take me out of my life and make me want to go there.”― Elaine Stritch“There’s something that really frightens me – and that’s fear.”― Elaine Stritch“I’m a hotel baby, absolutely: it’s hard to think of a hotel I haven’t stayed in.”― Elaine Stritch“I think it’s the wrong way around to say, ‘When you get older move to the country.’ I think when you get older you move to New York.”― Elaine Stritch“I care about money, very much. I want it. I don’t ever want to be without it. My mother once said about me, ‘Elaine has to have money.’”― Elaine Stritch“When I want to do something badly enough, I do it, but there is a practical side of me that thinks I should be paid fairly.”― Elaine Stritch“What I want to understand is what I am talking about on the stage. What I don’t want to understand is what the government is talking about when the government tells me about taxes.”― Elaine Stritch“I never found anyone who could look after me as well as I could look after myself.”― Elaine Stritch“Diabetes is a lousy, lousy disease.”― Elaine Stritch“I think the most interesting New Yorkers are the people who were not born here.”― Elaine Stritch“I do believe in the infallibility of the Pope, because I think we have to believe in something.”― Elaine Stritch“I love reviews. Anybody who tells you they don’t read reviews is a liar.”― Elaine Stritch“For me, going to London is like coming home. In fact, I’ve often entertained the idea of ending my days there.”― Elaine Stritch“As a diabetic, I’m a walking picnic. I have to eat measured amounts of food at certain times.”― Elaine Stritch“The closer a part is to you, the harder it is to play. Anything else is just imitation. If I’m playing a Russian countess, I get the hat, the accent, the outrageousness. Easy. Playing a murderess? Perfect.”― Elaine Stritch“I don’t wear a wig. I’d feel terrible onstage with a wig. I hate to be so ‘Actors Studio’-ish, but I like to feel it’s me out there.”― Elaine Stritch“I have no intention of retiring. Even my blood sugar is better when I’m working.”― Elaine Stritch“I tell the truth, and it has gotten me into a lot of trouble. My dad used to say to me, ‘If you tell the truth all day long, you will end up in jail.’”― Elaine Stritch“I have not had any of that surgical stuff. I am too curious to find out exactly how I progress every day of my life naturally. That is what fascinates me.”― Elaine Stritch“Fear is the base of what everybody does wrong in their lives.”― Elaine Stritch“My movie career – if such a thing even exists – is laughable.”― Elaine Stritch“Why haven’t I made more movies? Nobody asked me.”― Elaine Stritch“I don’t think there’s any thrill in the world like doing work you’re good at.”― Elaine Stritch“Certain type of actresses get younger instead of older. I always say, ‘Only ingenues age.’”― Elaine Stritch“When I’m playing comedy, it is such a crap shoot of what will work and what won’t.”― Elaine Stritch“You cannot tell an audience a lie. They know it before you do; before it’s out of your mouth, they know it’s a lie.”― Elaine Stritch“I don’t want to see a movie twice. I don’t want to do anything twice.”― Elaine Stritch“Audiences are not strangers to me. They’re the best friends I’ve got in my life.”― Elaine Stritch“All of the writing on ’30 Rock’ is a joy to go into. It’s pretty hot stuff.”― Elaine Stritch“I don’t have a great talent for explaining myself in acting because I can’t explain it.”― Elaine Stritch“Making clever speeches takes a lot of work and a lot of time.”― Elaine Stritch“I like being talked about. I think some people really don’t… because they’re secure enough and they don’t need that.”― Elaine Stritch“I love Birmingham, Michigan. It’s lovely – you know, it’s very similar to the Hamptons.”― Elaine Stritch“The people in New York – their humor is on a level that goes, uh, very deep, you know?”― Elaine Stritch“I don’t have to go to a doctor and have my face changed. It terrifies me that women do that.”― Elaine Stritch“I’m a good acting partner for me… when I don’t have anyone else, I do really well!”― Elaine Stritch“I love holidays in New York. I love ’em. I want to celebrate something all the time, and New York has holidays for every day of the week, practically. I like holidays in New York City.”― Elaine Stritch“You never know what is happening to yourself when it is happening.”― Elaine Stritch“I could have made a lot of money doing ‘Golden Girls,’ and I would have been good. But the image of it! And for me to work with Betty White every day would be like taking cyanide.”― Elaine Stritch“Talent is very dangerous. It alienates people.”― Elaine Stritch“Betty White is probably a very nice woman.”― Elaine Stritch“I find it easier to abstain than do a little bit of anything. I’m not a ‘little bit’ kind of dame. I want it all, whatever I do.”― Elaine Stritch“New Yorkers stop me on the street all the time to say, ‘You’re terrific! You’re the nuts!’”― Elaine Stritch“Let me tell you about those convents. All that crap about extending the pinkie finger while sipping tea is a myth. Convent schools are breeding grounds for great broads and occasionally one-of-the-boys. Convent schools teach you to play against everything, which is what I’m still doing.”― Elaine Stritch“These performers that go on about their technique and craft – oh, puleeze! How boring! I don’t know what ‘technique’ means. But I do know what experience is.”― Elaine Stritch“There’s certainly nothing lasting and definite about the theater.”― Elaine Stritch“You can’t be funny unless you’re tragic, and you can’t be tragic unless you’re funny.”― Elaine Stritch“I compare Stephen Sondheim with humor, because humor is unanalyzable. You can’t analyze humor. You just have to get through it.”― Elaine Stritch“Honestly, this is a big thing to say, but I don’t think I’ve ever been bored. If I even get an inkling of it, I split.”― Elaine Stritch“I think being boring is just the worst sin of all time.”― Elaine Stritch“Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.”― Elaine Stritch“I never thought about living in New York. I just thought it was great.”― Elaine Stritch“I don’t want to see my family all the time, and they’re delighted, I’m sure, to be aware of that.”― Elaine Stritch“Quite frankly I don’t know how to be happy. I have not a clue.”― Elaine Stritch“I just serve others through entertaining. That’s when I am happy.”― Elaine Stritch“There are a lot of things I do that I don’t want to, but I have to. It’s truly an emotional need for me to perform.”― Elaine Stritch“There’s something about it that makes sense, Lent. You give something up, and everything’s more joyful.”― Elaine Stritch“Isn’t this fantastic, what a star I am?”― Elaine Stritch“I don’t think I’m gonna die tomorrow or even two weeks from now, or even ever. I just don’t know – who the hell knows what’s gonna happen to them? Nobody! Isn’t that comforting? Nobody has a clue. I like that we don’t know. And I like that it’s somebody else’s decision, not mine.”― Elaine Stritch“My biggest dream was to get out of Michigan – to discover life beyond the Sacred Heart Convent.”― Elaine Stritch“I like celebrities. I love people who are famous. Always have.”― Elaine Stritch“I like glasses so I can go out without my makeup. Just grab your coat and get your hat and go.”― Elaine Stritch“When the hospital sends for me, when the ambulance comes and I ease my way out of the world, I’d rather be in Detroit, Michigan, than Lenox Hill.”― Elaine Stritch“I love New York. I went to New York to become an actress, and I did it. And I won all the awards known to man. And I’m happy. And I came home. I came, I saw, I conquered. And it feels great.”― Elaine Stritch“I’m loaded with talent.”― Elaine Stritch“I loved being on Broadway, but performing has become exhausting, and I just don’t want to live in New York anymore. I’m just sick of the competition in New York, the feeling that I always have to rehearse to keep up my performance. I don’t feel like rehearsing, even though it should be my favorite thing in the world to do.”― Elaine Stritch“I smoked, I drank, I did all the kicking my heels up type things, but I went to Mass on Sunday.”― Elaine Stritch“If I see someone saying the rosary in the wings, I know they’ve got talent.”― Elaine Stritch“I love audiences. My God, the best friends in the world!”― Elaine Stritch“I think I have more humour in me than anger. But those two things are great bed-fellows, performance-wise.”― Elaine Stritch“There were a lot of lyrics that I sang but didn’t understand. But I had this facade in performance of looking like I wrote the book.”― Elaine Stritch“I think taking care of yourself, health-wise, in every way, is a 100 percent winner.”― Elaine Stritch“Fans recognize me all over the place. But the second you need anything, they’re never around! They’re like the police!”― Elaine Stritch
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