Top 50 Joan Crawford Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Send me flowers while I’m alive. They won’t do me a damn bit of good after I’m dead.”

— Joan Crawford

2. “Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.”

— Joan Crawford

3. “Be afraid of nothing.”

— Joan Crawford

4. “Care for your clothes, like the good friends they are.”

— Joan Crawford

5. “If I can’t be me, I don’t want to be anybody.”

— Joan Crawford

6. “I never go outside unless I look like Joan Crawford the movie star. If you want to see the girl next door, go next door.”

— Joan Crawford

7. “Choose your clothes for your way of life.”

— Joan Crawford

8. “Not that anyone cares, but there’s a right and wrong way to clean a house.”

— Joan Crawford

9. “Then there’s that ‘You’re only as old as you feel’ business, which is true to a point, but you can’t be Shirley Temple on the Good Ship Lollipop forever. Sooner or later, dammit, you’re old.”

— Joan Crawford

10. “Well, we can skip childhood because I didn’t have any. Not one goddam moment on the Good Ship Lollipop.”

— Joan Crawford

11. “I’d like to think every director I’ve worked with has fallen in love with me, I know Dorothy Arzner did.”

— Joan Crawford

12. “There was a saying around MGM: “Norma Shearer got the productions, Greta Garbo supplied the art, and Joan Crawford made the money to pay for both”.”

— Joan Crawford

13. “If I weren’t a Christian Scientist, and I saw “Trog” advertised on a marquee across the street, I’d think I’d contemplate suicide.”

— Joan Crawford

14. “I think that the most important thing a woman can have – next to talent, of course – is her hairdresser.”

— Joan Crawford

15. “My tears speak for me.”

— Joan Crawford

16. “If you throw a lamb chop in the oven, what’s to keep it from getting done?”

— Joan Crawford

17. “There’s nothing wrong with my tits but I don’t go around throwing them in people’s faces.”

— Joan Crawford

18. “Box-office poison? Mr. Louis B. Mayer always asserted that the studio had built Stage 22, Stage 24 and the Irving Thalberg Building, brick by brick, from the income on my pictures.”

— Joan Crawford

19. “Recently I heard a ‘wise guy’ story that I had a party at my home for twenty-five men. It’s an interesting story, but I don’t know twenty-five men I’d want to invite ta a party.”

— Joan Crawford

20. “If you’ve earned a position, be proud of it. Don’t hide it. I want to be recognized. When I hear people say, ‘There’s Joan Crawford!’ I turn around and say, ‘Hi! How are you!’”

— Joan Crawford

21. “You have to be self-reliant and strong to survive in this town. Otherwise you will be destroyed.”

— Joan Crawford

Featured in: Strong Quotes

22. “Women’s Lib? Poor little things. They always look so unhappy. Have you noticed how bitter their faces are?”

— Joan Crawford

23. “I was born in front of a camera and really don’t know anything else.”

— Joan Crawford

24. “Any actress who appears in public without being well-groomed is digging her own grave.”

— Joan Crawford

25. “Check out the very best of Hollywood jokes that will make you laugh.”

— Joan Crawford

26. “I was a strict disciplinarian, perhaps too strict at times, but my God, without discipline what is life?”

— Joan Crawford

27. “They were grooming Doris Day to take over the top spot. Jack L. Warner asked me to play her sister in one picture. I said, “Come on, Jack. No one could ever believe that I would have Doris Day for a sister.””

— Joan Crawford

28. “If you have an ounce of common sense and one good friend you don’t need an analyst.”

— Joan Crawford

29. “I used to wash my hands every ten minutes. I couldn’t step out of the house unless I had gloves on. I wouldn’t smoke a cigarette unless I opened the pack myself, and I would never use another cigarette out of that pack if someone else had touched it.”

— Joan Crawford

30. “Nobody can imitate me. You can always see impersonations of Katharine Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe. But not me. Because I’ve always drawn on myself only.”

— Joan Crawford

31. “Make your wardrobe as versatile as an actress. It should be able to play many roles.”

— Joan Crawford

32. “Hollywood is like life, you face it with the sum total of your equipment.”

— Joan Crawford

33. “I need sex for a clear complexion, but I’d rather do it for love.”

— Joan Crawford

34. “I, Joan Crawford, I believe in the dollar. Everything I earn, I spend.”

— Joan Crawford

35. “I’ve persuaded myself that I hate things that are bad for me – fattening food, late nights, and loud and aggressive people head the list. I’m friends with myself, so I do things that are good for me, otherwise I couldn’t be good for others.”

— Joan Crawford

36. “I absolutely will not allow anyone to call me grandmother. They can call me Auntie Joan, Dee-Dee, Cho-Cho, anything but grandmother. It pushes a woman almost to the grave.”

— Joan Crawford

37. “Find your happiest colours – the ones that make you feel good.”

— Joan Crawford

38. “The intelligent woman adapts herself to fashion, but never to fad. She knows what is best for her, and her way of life, and sticks to it. She raises and lowers her hemline – with discretion – but she goes on with her timeless dresses made with the basic lines and fabrics that flatter HER, define HER life style. She’s secure, and so she can be an elegant individual.”

— Joan Crawford

39. “If you start watching the oldies, you’re in trouble. I feel ancient if “Grand Hotel” or “The Bride Wore Red” comes on. I have a sneaking regard for “Mildred Pierce”, but the others do nothing for me.”

— Joan Crawford

40. “Sensitive husbands don’t like second billing.”

— Joan Crawford

41. “Mr. Cukor is a hard task-master, a fine director and he took me over the coals giving me the roughest time I have ever had. And I am eternally grateful.”

— Joan Crawford

42. “When television killed comedy and love stories, the movie makers went in slugging. They offered the downbeat, the degenerate as competition. This seems to me to be a sad campaign for Hollywood to use to combat box office disaster.”

— Joan Crawford

43. “Sure, I’d play an ape if they asked me. Maurice Evans did.”

— Joan Crawford

44. “I remember most clearly when a teenage Christopher spat in my face. He said, “I hate you”. It’s pretty hard to overlook that. I couldn’t.”

— Joan Crawford

45. “Life deals from the bottom, sometimes, doesn’t it?”

— Joan Crawford

46. “Scrubbing, for me, is the greatest exercise in the world. It gives me rosy cheeks, and I just have a ball.”

— Joan Crawford

47. “My God, I’m four hundred years old and the most I can do is look three hundred.”

— Joan Crawford

48. “Bitterness and self-pity are deadly poisons that can’t be hidden. They seem to exude from the pores.”

— Joan Crawford

49. “The most beautiful clothes look awful draped over a shapeless from. And, conversely, a really good figure can wear a twenty-dollar dress with verve.”

— Joan Crawford

50. “Conquering fears, whatever they may be, opens life up – and this life should be as full of different experiences as we can make it. Too many women build fences around themselves, especially as they grow older. They limit themselves, or feel that life has limited them.”

— Joan Crawford