Gypsy Rose Quotes & Sayings

I think Gypsy [Rose Lee] would be appalled at today's rawer, more blatant displays of the female form. She was, in her own way, a prude. — Karen Abbott

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing slowly ... very slowly. — Gypsy Rose Lee

Praying is like a rocking chair - it'll give you something to do, but it won't get you anywhere. — Gypsy Rose Lee

God will protect us, but to make sure, carry a heavy club. — Gypsy Rose Lee

I felt differently about her [Gypsy Rose Lee] during every phase of the research and writing process. Often, I felt incredibly sorry for her; she had an extremely difficult childhood and a complicated 'to say the least' relationship with her family, her mother especially. — Karen Abbott

The dog is dressed just like me at the climax of my act. — Gypsy Rose Lee

She's descended from a long line her mother listened to. — Gypsy Rose Lee

When I tried to do something else, everyone behaved as if I was Gypsy Rose Lee trying to paint a Matisse. — Zoe Heller

She is descended from a long line that her mother listened to. — Gypsy Rose Lee

Well I see you there with the rose in your teeth
One more thin gypsy thief
Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes
I thought it was there for good so I never tried.
And Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear — Leonard Cohen

She [Gypsy Rose Lee] was a sophisticated self-satirist with a contagious delight in the comedy of sex. She was coy; she was sly; she always had a witty quip; she had an intensely dramatic presence. — Karen Abbott

She once said, 'I'm really a little prudish, which people may think incongruous'. I take a prudish point of view on certain films, books, and trends. Then, I pull myself up short and ask myself how Gypsy Rose Lee could possibly be this way.I thought that quote was so telling, a key insight into the way she so carefully separated who she was from her meticulous creation. — Karen Abbott

Gypsy [Rose Lee] is as unique as she is timeless. Her story is classic Americana, and the strangest rags-to-riches saga you'll ever read; I like to call it Horatio Alger meets Tim Burton. — Karen Abbott

I'm probably the highest paid outdoor entertainer since Cleopatra, — Gypsy Rose Lee

One of my favorite people is Gypsy Rose Lee. She bears out the Biblical promise that he who has, gets. And I hope she gets a lot more. — Hedy Lamarr

Gypsy [Rose Lee ] was a masterful storyteller, and her memoir and by extension, the musical weren't only Gypsy's monument; they were also her chance for monumental revisionism. — Karen Abbott

A half-century before Madonna, Gypsy [Rose Lee] understood how to make performance out of desire, how to exploit the very human and eternal instinct to always want most what we'll never have. — Karen Abbott

I wasn't naked, I was completely covered by a blue spotlight. — Gypsy Rose Lee

You don't have to be naked to look naked. You just have to think naked. — Gypsy Rose Lee

When Gypsy was older, after she became Gypsy Rose Lee, I think she was both proud and slightly ashamed of her Seattle roots. She worked very hard to rid her voice of any trace of a local accent, cultivating an affected way of speaking that sounded as if she pinned the ends of her words. — Karen Abbott

I wrote it three times - with a Thesaurus. — Gypsy Rose Lee

Gypsy [Rose Lee] wasn't a linear person, and she didn't live life in a linear fashion. She was relentlessly self-inventing, and moved backward as often as she moved forward. — Karen Abbott

One of the biggest questions to me was whether or not Gypsy the person was capable of loving anyone or anything beyond Gypsy Rose Lee the creation, and even that was a conflicted, tortured relationship. — Karen Abbott

I don't consider 'American Rose' to be a biography so much as a microcosm of 20th-century America, told through Gypsy's tumultuous life - it's 'Horatio Alger meets Tim Burton.' — Karen Abbott

I greatly admired Gypsy [Rose Lee] for being able to rise above her circumstances; I was terrified of her; I thought she was generous; I thought she was brilliant; I thought she was cruel. — Karen Abbott

This is your karma. You do not understand now, but you will understand later. The source of pain is within your own larger expression of being. — H. Raven Rose

I used to come home at night full of inspiration, and sit up with a bottle of Scotch. As I wrote, the words seemed wonderful, just too wonderful to be coming from me. Next morning I always found they were terrible and I could never use anything I wrote. — Gypsy Rose Lee

I thought both she [Gypsy Rose Lee] and her story would be ill-served by a conventional, birth-to-death narrative, and so I structured the book like one of her stripteases: revealing a peek of shoulder, then a glimpse of knee, pulling back a bit before you go a bit further, until all is revealed at the end. — Karen Abbott

I came upon a telegram from Eleanor Roosevelt herself to Gypsy Rose Lee that read, 'May your bare ass always be shining'. That was the clincher; I had to write about this woman. — Karen Abbott

Burlesque thrived during the Great Depression, and by extension, so, too, did Gypsy [Rose Lee]. Men could no longer afford to pay $5.50 to see a show on Broadway, but they could scrape together $1.00 for a matinee at a burlesque house. — Karen Abbott

A naked dog for a naked lady. — Gypsy Rose Lee

In Gypsy [Rose Lee] the musical, her mother, 'Mama Rose', is portrayed as a slightly eccentric, pushy, ambitious stage mother, but that version doesn't come close to the truth. — Karen Abbott

The cousin said that Gypsy [Rose Lee] took a full fifteen minutes to peel off a single glove, and that she was so damn good at it he gladly would've given her fifteen more. So this story got me thinking, who was Gypsy Rose Lee? Who could possibly take the simple act of peeling off a glove and make it so riveting that one might be compelled to watch this for a full half-hour? So I began researching, and I came across a series of articles from the year 1940 about Gypsy in Life magazine. — Karen Abbott

I've got everything I had 20 years ago, except now it's all lower. — Gypsy Rose Lee

Gypsy [Rose Lee], who was called Louise as a kid, gave her first performances here with her sister [June Hovac], playing for the local Masonic lodge halls. It was a tight-knit community, and the support and success the act enjoyed here enabled them to hit the road and make it in big-time vaudeville. — Karen Abbott

I spent three years researching American Rose, research that included connecting with Gypsy's sister, the late actress June Havoc (I was the last person to interview her) and Gypsy's son, and also spending countless hours immersed in Gypsy's expansive archives at the New York Public Library. I became obsessed with figuring out the person behind the persona. — Karen Abbott

I have everything I had twenty years ago, only it's all a little bit lower. — Gypsy Rose Lee

God is love, but get it in writing. — Gypsy Rose Lee

If Lady Gaga and Dorothy Parker had a secret love child, it would've been Gypsy Rose Lee. Gypsy arrived for opening nights at the Met wearing a full-length cape made entirely of orchids, while Lady Gaga shows up wearing a full-length cloak made of meat. — Karen Abbott

It was a great challenge to reconstruct Gypsy Rose Lee life, and my interviews with her sister [June Havoc] proved invaluable. It's not often that writers have access to living primary source material; this was the only person who experienced life on the vaudeville circuit with Gypsy during the 1920s, and who saw her perform at Minsky's Burlesque in the 1930s. She knew things that no one else could ever possibly know. — Karen Abbott

This is my present, you know. My present from Mother. — Gypsy Rose Lee

I have everything I had 20 years ago, only it's all a little lower. — Gypsy Rose Lee

Anything worth doing well is worth doing slowly ... — Gypsy Rose Lee

Men aren't attracted to me by my mind. They're attracted by what I don't mind. — Gypsy Rose Lee