Top 40 Greta Garbo Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “There are some who want to get married and others who don’t. I have never had an impulse to go to the altar. I am a difficult person to lead.”

— Greta Garbo

2. “Every one of us lives this life just once, if we are honest, to live once is enough.”

— Greta Garbo

3. “I never said, ‘I want to be alone.’ I only said, ‘I want to be let alone!’ There is all the difference.”

— Greta Garbo

4. “I only said, ‘I want to be left alone.’”

— Greta Garbo

5. “I wish I were supernaturally strong so I could put right everything that is wrong.”

— Greta Garbo

Featured in: Strong Quotes

6. “Perhaps it’s better if I live in your heart, where the world can’t see me. If I’m dead, there will be no stain on our love.”

— Greta Garbo

7. “I don’t like to talk to people, because I can’t express myself satisfactorily. I don’t say the things I mean.”

— Greta Garbo

8. “Life would be so wonderful if we only knew what to do with it.”

— Greta Garbo

9. “Anyone who has a continuous smile on his face conceals a toughness that is almost frightening.”

— Greta Garbo

10. “It’s midnight. One half of Paris is making love to the other half.”

— Greta Garbo

11. “Is there anything better than to be longing for something, when you know it is within reach?”

— Greta Garbo

12. “I always wanted to do my best. I got nothing free – I had to work hard.”

— Greta Garbo

13. “You don’t have to be married to have a good friend as your partner for life.”

— Greta Garbo

14. “It could be so beautiful here if the Americans themselves had not made it so ugly with their big buildings, their millions of cars, and noise...”

— Greta Garbo

15. “There seems to be a law that governs all our actions so I never make plans.”

— Greta Garbo

16. “Mr. Hitler was big on me. He kept writing and inviting me to come to Germany, and if the war hadn’t started when it did, I would have gone and I would have taken a gun out of my purse and shot him, because I am the only person who would not have been searched.”

— Greta Garbo

17. “I like the sea: we understand one another. It is always yearning, sighing for something it cannot have; and so am I.”

— Greta Garbo

18. “I always look well when I’m near death.”

— Greta Garbo

19. “I cannot see myself as a wife. Ugly word.”

— Greta Garbo

20. “There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person. They are you, your private joys and sorrows, and you can never tell them. You cheapen yourself, the inside of yourself, when you tell them.”

— Greta Garbo

21. “It is bitter to think of one’s best years disappearing in this unpolished country.”

— Greta Garbo

22. “I’m not always sincere. One can’t be in this world, you know.”

— Greta Garbo

23. “I’m tired and nervous and I’m in America. Here you don’t know that you live.”

— Greta Garbo

24. “When one has not long to live, why shouldn’t one have fancies?”

— Greta Garbo

25. “I never met a man I could marry.”

— Greta Garbo

26. “I’m afraid of NOTHING except being bored!”

— Greta Garbo

27. “I’m a completely worthless woman and no man should risk his life for me.”

— Greta Garbo

28. “I have made enough faces.”

— Greta Garbo

29. “Gimme a visky with a ginger ale on the side – and don’t be stinchy, beby.”

— Greta Garbo

30. “Snow is like a wide sea. One could go out and be lost in it and forget the world, and oneself.”

— Greta Garbo

31. “The story of my life is about back entrances, side doors, secret elevators and other ways of getting in and out of places so that people won’t bother me.”

— Greta Garbo

32. “I smoke all the time, one after the other.”

— Greta Garbo

33. “I don’t like writers. They’re dangerous people.”

— Greta Garbo

34. “All alike, you men. You only want the satisfaction of being through with us first, that’s all. So far I’ve had the good fortune of beating you to it. So I am heartless.”

— Greta Garbo

35. “There is no one who would have me – I can’t cook.”

— Greta Garbo

36. “Why should you care for a woman like me? I’m always nervous or sick, or sad or too gay.”

— Greta Garbo

37. “How can one change one’s entire life and build a new one on one moment of love? And yet, that’s what you make me want to close my eyes and do.”

— Greta Garbo

38. “I was always sad as a child, for as long as I can think back. I hated crowds of people, and used to sit in a corner by myself, just thinking.”

— Greta Garbo

39. “I live like a monk: with one toothbrush, one cake of soap, and a pot of cream.”

— Greta Garbo

40. “The mystery surrounding Garbo was as thick as a London fog.”

— Greta Garbo

41. “If you are blessed, you are blessed, whether you are married or single.”

— Greta Garbo

42. “I’ve always wanted two lives – one for the movies, one for myself.”

— Greta Garbo

43. “If you’re going to die on screen, you’ve got to be strong and in good health.”

— Greta Garbo

Featured in: Strong Quotes

44. “I don’t want to be a silly temptress. I cannot see any sense in getting dressed up and doing nothing but tempting men in pictures.”

— Greta Garbo

45. “Except physically, we know little more about Garbo than we know about Shakespeare.”

— Greta Garbo

46. “My talents fall within definite limitations. I am not as versatile an actress as some think.”

— Greta Garbo

47. “Why haven’t I got a husband and children?” mused Greta Garbo to the Dutchess of Windsor, “I never met a man I could marry.”

— Greta Garbo

48. “Being a movie star, and this applies to all of them, means being looked at from every possible direction. You are never left at peace, you’re just fair game.”

— Greta Garbo