Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate ...

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.

I'm just an Irish biddy.

Audiences have kept me alive.

I'm the original take-orders girl.

Behind every cloud is another cloud.

'Twas not my lips you kissed but my soul.

If I am a legend, then why am I so lonely?

I was born at the age of twelve on an MGM lot.

I was born in a lovely white house with a garden.

Velveeta: you can eat it - or wax your car with it!

It's lonely and cold on the top... lonely and cold.

Birds fly over the rainbow. Why then, oh, why can't I?

In our house, the word of Louis B. Mayer became the law.

I can live without money, but I cannot live without love.

Give the people what they want and then go have a hamburger.

My mother had a marvelous talent for mishandling money - mine.

If you have to be in a soap opera try not to get the worst role.

How strange when an illusion dies. It's as though you've lost a child.

I'm a woman who wants to reach out and take 40 million people in her arms.

The greatest treasures are those invisible to the eye but found by the heart.

I've never looked through a keyhole without finding someone was looking back.

My father's death was the most terrible thing that happened to me in my life.

Hollywood is a strange place if you're in trouble. Everybody thinks it's contagious.

I've been in love with audiences all my life, and I've tried to please. I hope I did.

I try to bring the audience's own drama - tears and laughter they know about - to them.

There have been a lot of stories written about me, some of them fantastically distorted.

I think that I have every right to write a book. I think I'm interesting. I have perspective about me.

Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.

I truly have a great love for an audience, and I used to want to prove it to them by giving them blood.

I've seen the ticket, and I still can't believe it. When I see the money, I hope I don't hit the floor.

For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.

To let a fool kiss you is bad...To let a kiss fool you is worse. 'Twas not my lips you kissed but my soul.

We cast away priceless time in dreams, born of imagination, fed upon illusion, and put to death by reality.

I think there's something peculiar about me that I haven't died. It doesn't make sense but I refuse to die.

When I die I have visions of fags singing 'Over the Rainbow' and the flag at Fire Island being flown at half mast.

[On daughter Liza Minnelli] I think she decided to go into show business when she was an embryo, she kicked so much.

My life, my career has been like a roller coaster. I've either been an enormous success or just a down-and-out failure.

There have been times when I have deliberately tried to take my life... I think I must have been crying for some attention.

If I'm such a legend, then why am I so lonely? Let me tell you, legends are all very well if you've got somebody around who loves you.

In the silence of night I have often wished for just a few words of love from one man, rather than the applause of thousands of people.

People en masse have always been wonderful to me. I truly have a great love for an audience...I want to give them two hours of just pow.

He gave me a look at myself I've never had before. He saw something in me nobody else ever did. He made me see it too. He made me believe it.

I've always taken 'The Wizard of Oz' very seriously, you know. I believe in the idea of the rainbow. And I've spent my entire life trying to get over it.

You know something? I'm decent! There isn't a great deal of decency in the world, especially in our business, and I'm one of the few really decent ladies around.

Soon the sun beams will smile through. Before you jump out of that bed, just know, the thought of you was the first thing that hit my head. Good morning my darling.

You are never so alone as when you are ill on stage. The most nightmarish feeling in the world is suddenly to feel like throwing up in front of four thousand people.

Wouldn`t it be wonderful if we could all be a little more gentle with each other, and a little more loving, have a little more empathy, and maybe we'd like each other a little bit more.

From the time I was thirteen, there was a constant struggle between MGM and me - whether or not to eat, how much to eat, what to eat. I remember this more vividly than anything else about my childhood.

As for my feelings toward "Over the Rainbow", it's become part of my life. It is so symbolic of all dreams and wishes that I'm sure that's why people sometimes get tears in their eyes when they hear it.

When you have lived the life I've lived, when you've loved and suffered, and been madly happy and desperately sad -- well, that's when you realize you'll never be able to set it all down. Maybe you'd rather die first.

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