- A successful man is one who makes more money than a wife can spend. A successful woman is one who can find such a man.
- I find men terribly exciting, and any girl who says she doesn't is an anemic old maid, a streetwalker, or a saint.
- [on Hollywood] It was all beauty and it was all talent, and if you had it they protected you.
- I planned on having one husband and seven children, but it turned out the other way around.
- Humor has been the balm of my life, but it's been reserved for those close to me, not part of the public Lana.
- I've always loved a challenge.
- Trash is something you get rid of - or disease. I'm not something you get rid of.
- I liked the boys and the boys liked me.
- The thing about happiness is that it doesn't help you to grow; only unhappiness does that. So I'm grateful that my bed of roses was made up equally of blossoms and thorns. I've had a privileged, creative, exciting life, and I think that the parts that were less joyous were preparing me, testing me, strengthening me.
- The truth is, sex doesn't mean that much to me now. It never did, really. It was romance I wanted, kisses and candlelight, that sort of thing. I never did dig sex very much.
- [on her father's murder] The shock I suffered then may be a valid excuse for me now - may explain things I do not myself understand.
- With each marriage, I thought that that would be *it*. In my wildest dreams I never, never thought that I would have seven husbands. If you can believe it, I thought at the time that each marriage would last forever. You see, with one bitterly painful exception, when I fell in love, I married.
- [on her marriage to Artie Shaw] After the ceremony, we went out to an all-night diner for coffee. Suddenly I realized that my mother had no idea where I was. The taxi drove us to the telegraph office, and I wrote out a message: "Got married in Las Vegas. Call you later. Love, Lana." Maybe it was subconscious, but I didn't mention who it was I'd married.
- I read someplace that Judy Garland, then seventeen, had had a serious crush on Artie [Shaw]. She had gone out with him days before I did and hoped he was getting serious. The morning after we eloped, she was eating breakfast in bed when she saw the headlines, and immediately burst into tears. Later that day Phil Silvers got an angry phone call from Betty Grable, who was in love with Artie and getting a divorce. "That son of a bitch," she told Phil, "who does he think he is?"
- If I don't laugh at least three times during the day, I've had a bad day. I've got to have a minimum of at least three good laughs. I wouldn't have survived without my sense of humor, and thank God I have always been able to laugh at myself.
- I haven't had an easy life, but it sure hasn't been a dull one. And I'm pretty proud of the way this gal has held up.
- If I'd been given a magical glimpse into my future, if I could have foreseen everything that was going to happen to me, all the headlines my life would make, all the people who would pass through my days, I wouldn't have believed a syllable of it!
- [on relationships] Today things are very different, and I think they're healthier. People fall in love and move in together, and nobody bats an eye. They get to know each other first, to see if their romance can survive the mundane things like whether or not he picks up after himself, or she leaves hair in the sink. Or that all-important question of sharing expenses, each one pulling his or her weight. Honeymoon first, and if it lasts, then marriage. I like that.
- [on the headlines about the Stamponato case] I read everything, then reread it, attempting to analyze the whole awful happening. And after I had done that I felt totally drained. The press had done their worst, and now I knew exactly what that worst was. And I'd have to survive it.
- [on her marriage to Artie Shaw] Marriage meant permanence to me, but with Artie, I began to realize, it was no marriage. It was hell.
- [on Joan Crawford] One day I got a phone call from Joan Crawford. Greg [Bautzer] had taken me to several parties at her house, but I didn't know her well. Those parties were all the same. After dinner the guests would be herded into a projection room to watch movies. Joan knitted constantly. During the film, you could always hear her needles clicking away.
- In These Glamour Girls (1939), I was billed as costar with Lew Ayres. There were so many girls in the picture that the studio had just slapped up some flats as our dressing rooms. As soon as I saw them I got Mr. Mayer on the phone. I could hear someone on the set whispering, "Uh-oh, she's going to get in trouble." But I went ahead and told him directly, "I want a dressing room of my own." And I got it.
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