Top 40 Tallulah Bankhead Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I’m not childless, darling. I am childfree.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

2. “If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

3. “Too many of our countrymen rejoice in stupidity, look upon ignorance as a badge of honor. They condemn everything they don’t understand.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

4. “If I were well behaved, I’d die of boredom.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

5. “Only good girls keep diaries. Bad girls don’t have time.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

6. “Fill what is empty, empty what is full, and scratch where it itches.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

7. “I’ve had a man and I’ve had a woman, and there’s got to be something better.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

8. “A frozen daiquiri of a scorching afternoon is soothing. It makes living more tolerable.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

9. “They aren’t making mirrors like they use to.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

10. “Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

11. “Say anything about me, darling, as long as it isn’t boring.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

12. “I’ll come and make love to you at five o’clock. If I’m late start without me.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

Featured in: Fun Quotes

13. “I’m the foe of moderation, the champion of excess.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

14. “Do you know what my ambition is in life? To be without ambition. As far back as I can remember I’ve been absolutely hag-ridden. I’d like to attain the state of mind that the Indians call Nirvana. That, for me, would happen if I were free of ambition.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

15. “I have enemies I’ve never met – that’s fame.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

16. “My father warned me about men and booze but he never said anything about women and cocaine.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

17. “I thought I told you to wait in the car.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

18. “Don’t think this has taught me a lesson !”

— Tallulah Bankhead

19. “Here’s a rule I recommend: Never practice two vices at once.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

20. “I think the Republican party should be placed in drydock and have the barnacles scraped off its bottom.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

21. “There have only been two authentic geniuses in the world, Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare and I think you’d better put Shakespeare first, darling.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

22. “I’m the foe of moderation, the champion of excess. If I may lift a line from a die-hard whose identity is lost in the shuffle, ‘I’d rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.’”

— Tallulah Bankhead

23. “They say it’s the good girls who keep diaries. The bad girls never have the time. Me, I just wanna live a life I’m gonna remember even if I don’t write it down.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

24. “I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice. That’s what I call a liberal education.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

25. “No man worth his salt, no man of spirit and spine, no man for whom I could have any respect, could rejoice in the identification of Tallulah’s husband. It’s tough enough to be bogged down in a legend. It would be even tougher to marry one.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

26. “My heart is pure as the driven slush.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

27. “In my lifetime I’ve been to bed with men, women, and odd pieces of furniture.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

28. “A Republican. A Republican. That’s worse than being a goddamned Communist!”

— Tallulah Bankhead

29. “Whatever you have read I have said is almost certainly untrue, except if it is funny, in which case I definitely said it.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

30. “If you know your Bible and your Shakespeare and can shoot craps, you have a liberal education.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

31. “I’d rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

32. “It’s unlikely I’ll ever submit to a psychiatrist’s couch. I don’t want some stranger prowling around through my psyche, monkeying with my id. I don’t need an analyst to tell me that I have never had any sense of security. Who has?”

— Tallulah Bankhead

33. “Drink reacts on its practitioners in conflicting ways. One brave can knock off a quart of Scotch and look and act as sober as Herbert Hoover. Another, after three Martinis, makes two-cushion carroms off the chaise lounge as he attempts to negotiate the bathroom.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

34. “Cocaine isn’t habit forming. I should know, I’ve been using it for years.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

35. “The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

36. “I’m not at my best when I moralize or philosophize. Logic is elusive, especially to one who so rarely uses it.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

37. “Will TV kill the theater? If the programs I have seen, save for “Kukla, Fran and Ollie,” the ball games and the fights, are any criterion, the theater need not wake up in a cold sweat.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

38. “Don’t be taken in by the guff that critics are killing the theater. Commonly they sin on the side of enthusiasm. Too often they give their blessing to trash.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

39. “My progress reminded me of the horses in The Whip. They raced at the limit of their speed directly toward the audience. But they raced on a treadmill which canceled out their progress.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

40. “For acting, darlings, is the world’s most perilous trade. Compared with actors, steeple jacks and deep-sea divers lead snug and placid lives.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

41. “In the theater lying is looked upon as an occupational disease.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

42. “I have been tight as a tick! Fried as a mink! Stiff as a goat!”

— Tallulah Bankhead

43. “I detest acting because it is sheer drudgery.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

44. “I’ve been called many things, but never an intellectual.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

45. “It’s one of the tragic ironies of the theatre that only one man in it can count on steady work – the night watchman.”

— Tallulah Bankhead

46. “Acting is the most insecure of all the trades, the most risky. In their professional lifetime most actors rehearse longer than they play, spend more time traipsing from office to office in search of jobs than they rehearse and play combined.”

— Tallulah Bankhead