Gloria Swanson Quotes & Sayings

I always anticipated difficulties in order to avoid scenes. — Gloria Swanson

When I die, my epitaph should read: She Paid the Bills. That's the story of my private life. — Gloria Swanson

I was the first celebrity in pictures to be marrying a titled European. — Gloria Swanson

One of the networks sent me a TV set to watch. I didn't care for the medium. It depressed me. — Gloria Swanson

So they were turning, after all - those cameras. Life, which can be strangely merciful, had taken pity on Norma Desmond. The dream she had clung to so desperately had enfolded her. Norma: You see, this is my life. It always will be! (In a whisper) There's nothing else - just us - and the cameras - and those wonderful people out there in the dark. All right, Mr. De Mille, I'm ready for my close-up. — Gloria Swanson

My mother and I could always look out the same window without ever seeing the same thing. — Gloria Swanson

Sunset Boulevard opened in August 1950, and it was pronounced the best movie ever made about Hollywood. — Gloria Swanson

I doubted that there were Communists hiding behind every corporation desk and director's chair. — Gloria Swanson

I think all this talk about age is foolish. Every time I'm one year older, everyone else is too. — Gloria Swanson

All they had to do was put my name on a marquee and watch the money roll in. — Gloria Swanson

The only time I ever went hunting I remembered it as a grisly experience. — Gloria Swanson

My sculpture is very personal; for years my subjects were family and close, close friends. — Gloria Swanson

I consider anybody who weighs over 200 pounds fat, and time was when I could not refrain from telling such people so. — Gloria Swanson

The Sennett system of making pictures was actually fun. You never knew what the person next to you was going to do. — Gloria Swanson

From the first moment on the set I was consumed with curiousity about the technical side of shooting a sound picture. — Gloria Swanson

Hollywood's old trick: repeat a successful formula until it dies. — Gloria Swanson

The first feminine feature that goes, with advancing age, is the neck. — Gloria Swanson

I became a fanatic about healthy food in 1944. — Gloria Swanson

I didn't want to spend the rest of my life playing Norma Desmond over and over again. — Gloria Swanson

It's amazing to find that so many people, who I thought really knew me, could have thought that 'Sunset Boulevard' was autobiographical. I've got nobody floating in my swimming pool. — Gloria Swanson

Nobody gets something for nothing. — Gloria Swanson

Sam Wood, the director, made most of his money as a real estate agent; there was nothing of the temperamental artist about him. — Gloria Swanson

We lived on the Key West Army Base. Key West for me was a tropical island paradise. — Gloria Swanson

My greatest debt will always be to the movie-going public of yesterday and today, without whose love and devotion I would have had no story to tell. — Gloria Swanson

The fuss that actors began making about the difficulty of shifting to sound struck me as perfectly foolish. — Gloria Swanson

Never say never, for if you live long enough, chances are you will not be able to abide by the simplest of such injunctions. — Gloria Swanson

I entered the cosmetics industry because I wanted more women to use cosmetics made with safe, healthful ingredients. — Gloria Swanson

Tennessee Williams was a gifted talker with a beautiful accent and we had lots of things in common. — Gloria Swanson

I have gone through a long apprenticeship. I have gone through enough of being a nobody. I have decided that when I am a star, I will be every inch and every moment the star! Everybody from the studio gateman to the highest executive will know it. — Gloria Swanson

After 16 years in pictures I could not be intimidated easily, because I knew where all the skeletons were buried. — Gloria Swanson

In a theater you can fool everyone past the tenth row if you're good, but on the screen you can't really fool anyone for a second. — Gloria Swanson

By the time I was 15, my mother had turned me into a real clotheshorse. — Gloria Swanson

The day I initiated divorce proceedings against Michael Farmer, I was ready to retire to a desert cave and rethink my life. — Gloria Swanson

Fame was thrilling only until it became grueling. Money was fun only until you ran out of things to buy. — Gloria Swanson

Never say never Never is a long, undependable time, and life is too full of rich possibilities to have restrictions placed upon it. — Gloria Swanson

Life and death. They are somehow sweetly and beautifully mixed, but I don't know how. — Gloria Swanson

I am big. It's the pictures that got small. — Gloria Swanson

I was 25 and the most popular celebrity in the world, with the possible exception of my friend Mary Pickford. — Gloria Swanson

The English press treated the world premiere of my first talking picture as a major event. — Gloria Swanson

Writing the story of your own life is a bit like drilling your own teeth. — Gloria Swanson

There was no place at all for me in my father's military world. — Gloria Swanson

I was married when I was 17. I knew nothing. I was full of romance. — Gloria Swanson

Your body is the direct result of what you eat as well as what you don't eat. — Gloria Swanson

The Paramount executives were so pleased with Sunset Boulevard that they asked me to do a publicity tour. — Gloria Swanson

I had starred in more than 30 successful films, six in a row directed by Cecil B. De Mille. — Gloria Swanson

At 26 I felt myself a victim rather than a victor in the realm of pictures. — Gloria Swanson

As Daddy said, life is 95 percent anticipation. — Gloria Swanson

If you're 40 years old and you've never had a failure, you've been deprived. — Gloria Swanson

The major gossip columnists were more concerned with protecting the industry than with gunning down sinners. — Gloria Swanson

All creative people should be required to leave California for three months every year. — Gloria Swanson

I feel sure that unborn babies pick their parents. — Gloria Swanson

Much as I cared for Joseph Kennedy, he was a classic example of that person in the arts with lots of brains and drive but little taste or talent. — Gloria Swanson

I am a very pragmatic person. — Gloria Swanson

Nobody gets anything for nothing. — Gloria Swanson

In two months Joseph Kennedy had taken over my entire life, and I trusted him implicitly to make the most of it. — Gloria Swanson

I've given my memoirs far more thought than any of my marriages. You can't divorce a book. — Gloria Swanson

Because I take care of my body, it doesn't look like the body of a woman of my years. — Gloria Swanson