Top 40 Tony Curtis Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Looking good is the best revenge.”

— Tony Curtis

2. “Jack Lemmon is my best friend and he’s a very wonderful actor. A very talented, very funny man. A lovely man. We’re like brothers! We are gifts to each other. He’s such a fun personality. There will only ever be one Jack Lemmon.”

— Tony Curtis

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3. “You wanna know the secret of life? The saliva of young girls.”

— Tony Curtis

4. “I wouldn’t be caught dead marrying a woman old enough to be my wife.”

— Tony Curtis

5. “I used to be good friends with my depression, saying oh I’m so depressed, or life is terrible.”

— Tony Curtis

6. “When I was in bed with Marilyn Monroe, I was never sure before, during or after, where her mind was.”

— Tony Curtis

7. “On kissing Marilyn Monroe: It’s like kissing Hitler.”

— Tony Curtis

8. “I’ve made 122 movies, and I daresay there’s a picture of mine showing somewhere in the world every day.”

— Tony Curtis

9. “I joined the Navy hoping to be submariner and ended up in the sub service aboard a tender in the Pacific.”

— Tony Curtis

10. “If you don’t know your gift, you’ve got no lift.”

— Tony Curtis

11. “I want the public to know that it will be an honor for me to meet them and spend a few special moments with all those who helped me through my filmed career.”

— Tony Curtis

12. “Women are beginning to lose their identity. They have jumped with teeth clenched, fists braced and eyes aglow, into the competitive man’s world. They’re losing the vibrant quality of femininity, the aura of mystery.”

— Tony Curtis

13. “Art is an emotional experience.”

— Tony Curtis

14. “Joe: We can’t just walk out on her without saying goodbye. Jerry: What? Since when? You usually walk out and leave ’em with nothing but a kick in the teeth. Joe: That’s when I was a saxophone player. Now I’m a millionaire.”

— Tony Curtis

15. “I can’t sit around and wait for the telephone to ring.”

— Tony Curtis

16. “I’ve always believed that service to others is rent we pay for our time on this planet.”

— Tony Curtis

17. “I will always remember this summer day in Paris, when I was to perform a great acrobatic move. I can still see myself stepping on the ring of a packed circus along real performers.”

— Tony Curtis

18. “I enlisted when I was a boy. The Navy looked after me like my mother. It fed me, took care of me and gave me wonderful opportunities.”

— Tony Curtis

19. “That so many people respond to me is fabulous. It is like having a kind of Alzheimer’s disease, where everyone knows you and you don’t know anyone.”

— Tony Curtis

20. “While you’re doing it, you don’t really know what you’re doing.”

— Tony Curtis

21. “Everywhere I go in the world, people know me and recognise me and really show affection for me.”

— Tony Curtis

22. “If you know how to live in Vegas you can have the best time.”

— Tony Curtis

23. “I’m world famous, everywhere I go there are people who love me because of I’ve been able to bring them some joy from the movies I’ve made.”

— Tony Curtis

24. “But where there is no art show, I would still be painting.”

— Tony Curtis

25. “Every movie I’ve been in has ended up on television.”

— Tony Curtis

26. “It is for the latter that I always wanted to be an actor: to play characters who are always on the move.”

— Tony Curtis

27. “We were scared. I guess when you’re in your twenties, that’s how it is. You’ve got an adult body, but you’re trying to make it work with a kid’s emotions. With Marilyn and me, it was worse. Our kid emotions didn’t even work. We’d been treated too poorly.”

— Tony Curtis

28. “The service meant so much to me. You don’t know privileged I feel and how lucky I am to have served.”

— Tony Curtis

29. “I don’t know what organically grown chickens are; I’ve never seen one.”

— Tony Curtis

30. “I enjoy being recognized whatever environment I’m in.”

— Tony Curtis

31. “We often don’t think of them, we think of the great wars and the great battles, but what about losing a son or a daughter, or a girl losing her husband or vice versa? I think of the people who never got the chance to have the opportunities I had.”

— Tony Curtis

32. “I’ve just opened a show in Florida, although I also have many pieces on display around the world.”

— Tony Curtis

33. “I’ve been in the movies for 50 years, I’ve made 130 some-odd movies.”

— Tony Curtis

34. “Like an opera singer, I am able to sing out my song in paint.”

— Tony Curtis

35. “My whole world before I joined the Navy was my neighborhood in the Bronx.”

— Tony Curtis

36. “I like Vegas for its spontaneity.”

— Tony Curtis

37. “Painting is much more than therapy to me its a way of life.”

— Tony Curtis

38. “Even on a personal note, my dressing table downstairs is crowded with things, like a mini landscape. It’s a city with buildings and towers and roads. There’s a pool and a little park. When I move something around it becomes a different tableau.”

— Tony Curtis

39. “I look at everything in an artistic way.”

— Tony Curtis

40. “I was born in and worked in a period that could be called enviable.”

— Tony Curtis

41. “Its not age as much as the experiences I have had.”

— Tony Curtis

42. “The government gave me enough money to go to acting school.”

— Tony Curtis

43. “The movie business is very twisted, out of site, out of mind, you know.”

— Tony Curtis

44. “It’s such a human condition, whether you’re a great track star or a great knitting person or you paint watercolors – someone knows who you are.”

— Tony Curtis

45. “But my longevity is due to my good timing.”

— Tony Curtis

46. “At 17, I dreamed of seeing the world. At 19, I had been around the world and back.”

— Tony Curtis

47. “They gave me away as a prize once – a Win Tony Curtis For A Weekend competition. The woman who won was disappointed. She’d hoped for second prize – a new stove.”

— Tony Curtis

48. “Now I’m a painter. That was another opportunity I was able to pursue, I’ve been painting all my life, now it’s become a second career because of my success in the movies.”

— Tony Curtis