Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.
Judy Garland
For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.
Behind every cloud is another cloud.
If I am a legend, then why am I so lonely?
I can live without money, but I cannot live without love.
When you get to know a lot of people, you make a great discovery. You find that no one group has a monopoly on looks, brains, goodness or anything else. It takes all the people - black and white, Catholic, Jewish and Protestant, recent immigrants and Mayflower descendants - to make up America.
We cast away priceless time in dreams, born of imagination, fed upon illusion, and put to death by reality.
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.
I believe that the real expression of your religious beliefs is shown in the daily pattern of your life, in what you contribute to your surroundings and what you take away without infringing on the rights of other people.
How strange when an illusion dies. It's as though you've lost a child.
I've never looked through a keyhole without finding someone was looking back.
I wasn't close to my father, but I wanted to be all my life. He had a funny sense of humor, and he laughed all the time - good and loud, like I do. He was a gay Irish gentleman and very good-looking. And he wanted to be close to me, too, but we never had much time together.
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.
I was always lonesome. The only time I felt accepted or wanted was when I was on stage performing. I guess the stage was my only friend: the only place where I could feel comfortable. It was the only place where I felt equal and safe.
If you have to be in a soap opera try not to get the worst role.
I was born at the age of twelve on an MGM lot.
I'm a woman who wants to reach out and take 40 million people in her arms.
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.
I think there's something peculiar about me that I haven't died. It doesn't make sense but I refuse to die.
It's lonely and cold on the top... lonely and cold.
I don't always have to sing a song. There is something besides 'The Man That Got Away' or 'Over the Rainbow' or 'The Trolley Song.' There's a woman. There are three children. There's me! There's a lot of life going here.
There have been times when I have deliberately tried to take my life... I think I must have been crying for some attention.
I think that I have every right to write a book. I think I'm interesting. I have perspective about me.
My father's death was the most terrible thing that happened to me in my life.
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.
A really great reception makes me feel like I have a great big warm heating pad all over me. People en masse have always been wonderful to me. I truly have a great love for an audience, and I used to want to prove it to them by giving them blood.
There have been a lot of stories written about me, some of them fantastically distorted.
I'm the original take-orders girl.
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.
I try to bring the audience's own drama - tears and laughter they know about - to them.
In our house, the word of Louis B. Mayer became the law.
My mother had a marvelous talent for mishandling money - mine.
Hollywood is a strange place if you're in trouble. Everybody thinks it's contagious.
