Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
All Angelina Jolie wants to do is do good for people. And she was saying to me: If I could just make one person happy, Joan, I'll die satisfied. I said: Easy! Just give Jennifer Aniston back her husband.
The last time I appeared in Las Vegas, they were wearing hoop skirts and Davy Crockett hats, ... But they say 'What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.' And as far as fashion is concerned, that's a good thing.
But you do have to learn, if you want to be a satirist, you can't be part of the party. Meaning, you can't go horseback riding with Jackie O in Central Park if you're going to make a joke about her that night.
With plastic surgery, the general anesthetic is like a black-velvety sleep, and that's what death is - without waking up to someone clapping and going, 'Joan, wake up, it's all over and you're looking pretty'.
Being Jewish has always been important to me. I now have 6M tattooed on the inside of my left arm. It's only a half-inch, but every time anyone sees it, they're reminded of the six million who perished, and so am I.
I was absorbing a sorry truth of show business - rejection is the norm and acceptance the oddity. I was learning to cut the tops off my highs and stay with the lows where the rejections and letdowns would be shallow.
I could pull my living in and live OK, but I don't want to live OK. I'm very happy to live in my penthouse, very happy I can pick up a check, very happy to have a great life and be able to spread my wealth a little bit.
Part of my act is meant to shake you up. It looks like I'm being funny, but I'm reminding you of other things. Life is tough, darling. Life is hard. And we better laugh at everything; otherwise, we're going down the tube.
I think actual death will be a lot easier than dying on stage. Cause - you know - if you do [actual death] right, you can go looking good. Maybe with a little quip [like]: 'I loved everybody.' But dying on stage...Oh, God!
I made so many jokes about poor Russell Crowe, he once knocked on my dressing room door, and told me he wanted to go out on this chat show we were on to laugh with me. Now he's ruined it. I can't make another joke about him.
My eyes opened, and the first thing I thought of when I could put thoughts together was I want to be in show business. Never wanted anything else. I used to sneak in the costume room at my nursery school and smell the costumes.
I'm grateful for every day I'm still alive. Everything is still working. I attribute it to eating a lot of processed foods. I think it's the preservatives that keep me going. That, and I eat as much chocolate as I can get my hands on.
I've never thought of it consciously... I say exactly what I think, and very often it's totally politically incorrect. I get, always, chastised for it. So it's not shtick. But I think I'm the one who says, 'The emperor has no clothes.'
There are many self-help books by Ph.D.s, but I hold a different degree: an I.B.T.I.A.-I've Been Through It All. This degree comes not on parchment but gauze, and it entitles me to tell you that there is a way to get through any misfortune.
I love gay and lesbian parents. But I think we need a law that says lesbians and gay men have to raise their children together. This way, the kids would not only know how to build bookshelves, but they'd also instinctively know how to decorate them.
The only street I like is Rue Honore de Balzac, because 'Balzac' sound so gay, and I love my gays. I might like Parisians more if they named their streets only for gay icons, like Rue Liza Minnelli or Rue Bette Midler or, my favorite, Rue McClanahan.
I truly think comedy is - being funny is DNA. My dad was a doctor, a wonderful doctor, and people still come up to me today, 'Your father helped my mother die.' You know what I'm saying? He made her laugh 'til she died. My father was always very funny.
People are arguing whether Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ" is anti-semitic. Well, whether it is or it isn't, it doesn't matter, because I've been in touch with his accounting firm, Rosencrantz, Levy and Stern, and they're screwing him out of his profits.
Sure I do a lot of jokes about Anne Frank. But when you do those jokes, it makes people remember what happened to her. That process of bringing her story back doesn't have to be a serious one. What I say is all nonsense, but it helps to keep her memory alive.
I think we obviously need health care. Of course we need health care, but I think that it's gone too far the other way, and I don't understand it. It's gotten so complicated. The minute they made a deal with the drug companies, you know something isn't kosher here.
I walk on a stage, and I know if it's been a good show or not. You know when it's been a good interview. No one has to tell you. You know it. You feel it. You can feel the air. You can feel everything about it when it's a good show. And you know when you've messed up.
I know now that everybody in the arts is forever a beginner. Experience counts for a great deal and very little. Every night onstage I feel I am starting from scratch, still not quite sure what I am doing and where I am going, thrown by the simplest thing that goes wrong.
Welcome to my world! I've been through it all, and I often pinch myself to believe my luck. I design jewlery, create cosmetics, perform comedy, act, lecture, write books, travel, have a fabulous daughter, and a phenomenal grandson-and I feel I'm the luckiest woman on the planet.
I caused my husband's heart attack. In the middle of lovemaking I took the paper bag off my head. He dropped the Polaroid and keeled over and so did the hooker. It would have taken me half an hour to untie myself and call the paramedics, but fortunately the Great Dane could dial.
I had a friend who was a plastic surgeon, so he would do little things. I never had, like, a full thing. So I would go in maybe once every two or three years, and he'd do a little here, a little there; tweak you, like you tweak your car. Then I became the plastic surgery poster girl.
I could never be in a cult. For starters, they never accessorize properly. David Koresh had no fashion sense, Jim Jones wore leisure suits, and I don't care how charismatic Osama bin Laden was, an AK-47 and an insulin drip do not take the place of drop earrings or a well-placed brooch.
And since we're all adults here, let's be brutally honest-most babies are not actually attractive. In fact, they're weird and freakish looking. A large percentage of them are squinty-eyed and bald and their faces are all mushed toegther, kind of like Renee Zellweger pushed up against a glass window.
Whatever you do to recover from a loss, people will be critical because they believe that the only way to recover is their way. And you will even run into some people who should be run into by rhinos because they actually don't want to see you get over your tragedy at all; grief is a spectator sport for them.
I'm at the top, top, top of my game now. I'm so happy to be on that stage, I'm in control of it, and I love every minute of it. I walk onstage in rehearsal and I start to smile. And so I just don't care what anyone else is doing. Do what you want, say what you want. Nobody else can do what I do onstage. Nobody.
Every comedian is furious. Age makes me angry. I'm unhappy at not being able to open packages anymore. I'm angry that libraries have gone. I hate children on planes. I'm very shallow, so they tend to be little things. To be honest, I think I was probably angry the day I was born, you know, about diapers or something.
I've always hate child stars, starting from way back when, when I was a child. The first child star I saw was Shirley Temple. She was six years old, two foot six and the biggest star in Hollywood. She wore ribbons in her hair, and frilly little pinafores and shiny patent-leather tap shoes - just like the boys in Glee do.
I think we all in comedi business, especially when we reach a certain age, are divas up to a point. I love when a limousine comes for me, I can't lie about that. I love when you go to a restaurant and they say, "Come this way, Miss Rivers," and you get a good table. I love all that, the perks that come with the business.
I've learned: When you get older, who cares? I don't mince words, I don't hold back. What are you gonna do to me? Fire me? It's been done. Threaten to commit suicide? Done. Take away my show? Done! Not invite to me to the Vanity Fair party? I've never been invited! If I ever saw the invitation, I'd use it as toilet paper.
What could be nicer than to have three horrible children behind you in an airplane, and the next set, you go onstage and you talk about how much you despise the children and what you would like to do to them on an airplane? That's the only time I would gladly take a terrorist on. It'd be worth it to get rid of these children.
Because I'm the only performer who comes out and says I've had plastic surgery, I've become the plastic surgery poster girl, which is hilarious, because everybody has done it and they all deny it. They stand there, like the Bride of Frankenstein, they've all got stitches, and they all say, 'I've done nothing.' I talk about it.
If you don't go to Broadway, you're a fool. On Broadway, off Broadway, above Broadway, below Broadway, go! Don't tell me there isn't something wonderful playing. If I'm home in New York at night, I'm either at a Broadway or an Off Broadway show. We're in the theater capital of the world, and if you don't get it, you're an idiot.
Remember a few years ago when they left Bea Arthur out of the death reel at the Oscars? Bea Arthur! How did they leave Bea Arthur out? She was in Mame; she was in All in the Family; she was in Maude; she was a Golden Girl, for God's sake! Bea was not only one of Hollywood's leading ladies, she was one of Hollywood's leading men!
"I've learned what's funny verbally ain't so funny on e-mail: They don't hear your intonations. Melissa broke up with somebody over that. She tried to tell him: "That was a joke!" But he just didn't get it. Mick Jagger said, "F- 'em if they don't get the joke." And I love him. That comes with age: Knowing it's their problem, not mine."
Learn what not to expect. Irish catholic they get sh**** little rings. Irish women get crappy rings. Baptist get the worst because they get the rings under water. When it comes up, it's garbage. Jewish, big rings. Episcopalian big rings. Italians-the best, because they get them off of dead people, and second wives get the biggest rings of all.
Somehow, some way, every person in the arts has to find an accommodation with disappointment and embarrassment. They are the pollen in the air we breathe. If you must go into the arts, go into them for yourself alone. On some basic level you must enjoy the act of doing it ... Otherwise, you are going to end up frustrated and unhappy. Recognition in the arts is luck and gravy.
Marriage isn't a contest to see who is most often right. Marriage requires being what the Japanese call 'the wise bamboo,' which means you bend so you don't break. Treat your spouse with the flexibility and respect you would give to a top client. Think how we treat clients; We smile, we are polite, we listen to their ideas. Never forget that your spouse is your most important client.
I'm going out with these old guys. One guy gave me a hickey and left his teeth in my neck. Another man, we were having a perfectly lovely dinner; he looked up and me and went: You're not my wife! Another guy died during dinner. I had to go in his pocket to get the American Express card. Then you wonder: What would he tip? Another guy said: I want you to meet my family, and took me to the cemetery.
Victoria Beckham is so nasty, why doesn't she just go home?! Her dresses are beautiful, but I don't care what she does. She's mean to all the people around her. She's too short to be a diva. We all use the same hairdressers, make-up artists, limo-drivers and greeters at the airports in LA and nobody has anything nice to say about her. They say she's rude. She can't always just be having a bad day.
When you're first-generation money, you want to say, "I got a Mercedes and a Rolls and a Lamborghini. Take a look." When you're second-generation money, you're very quiet behind your country club doors. I think that's why people are much more aware. It's the first-generation wives that have the huge rings and the second-generation says, "Everyone be quiet as we get on our yacht or our private plane."
Obama came in and said he was going turn everything around, and you can't. Give the guy a break. But I question a lot of what's happening. It's certainly going to reflect in my vote, but who else is there? It's a horrible time, because people vote party lines instead of what's good for the country. I think the whole health care issue turned so ugly, because of party lines, and that's not what that's supposed to be about.
Before we make love my husband takes a pain killer. I blame my mother for my poor sex life. All she told me was, 'the man goes on top and the woman underneath'. For three years my husband and I slept on bunk beds. I'm a double bagger. Not only does my husband put a bag over my face when we're making love, but he also puts a bag over his head in case mine falls off. It's so long since I've had sex, I've forgotten who ties up whom. My best birth control now is to leave the lights on.
Life is very tough, you know. You sit at a dinner party and talk to the person on your right or your left, you're going to hear something terribly sad, or horrible, or awful. And you just laugh at everything. I think it was Winston Churchill who said something like, any time you get someone to laugh, you're giving them a little vacation. It's so true. You laugh for one second, you're happy. I find in negotiations, everybody's sitting around looking so serious, I say something funny and it breaks the ice. And it's like, now we can get through this.