[On her work with William Powell] "I never enjoyed my work more than when I worked with William Powell. He was a brilliant actor, a delightful companion, a great friend and above all, a true gentleman."

"Life, is not a having and a getting, but a being and a becoming."

"I was a homely kid with freckles that came out every spring and stuck on me till Christmas."

[On her "Perfect Wife" label {based on he work in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)}]

"It was a role no one could live up to, really. No telling where my career would have gone if they hadn't hung that title on me. Labels limit you, because they limit your possibilities. But that's how they think in Hollywood."

[speaking in the late 60s] "I admire some of the people on the screen today, but most of them look like everybody else. In our days we had individuality. Pictures were more sophisticated. All this nudity is too excessive and it is getting very boring. It will be a shame if it upsets people so much that it brings on the need for censorship. I hate censorship. In the cinema there's no mystery. No privacy. And no sex either. Most of the sex I've seen on the screen looks like an expression of hostility towards sex."

"I rushed out of the projection room, ran home and cried for hours. I was really ashamed of myself. It was so awful..." [On her screen test for the film Cobra (1925)]

[Challenging MGM bosses in the 1930s] "Why does every black person in the movies have to play a servant? How about a black person walking up the steps of a court house carrying a briefcase?"

(referring to her perfect wife typecasting) "Some perfect wife I am. I've been married four times, divorced four times, have no children, and can't boil an egg."