Ruth Gordon quotes:

Nothing dates one so dreadfully as to think someplace is uptown. At our age one must be watchful of these conversational gray hairs.

Get up early in the morning before everybody has breathed up all the good air.

Pan me, don't give me the part, publish everybody's book but this one and I will still make it!

The very best impromptu speeches are the ones written well in advance.

Never give up. And never, under any circumstances, face the facts.

A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead, really. They're just backing away from life.

The kiss. There are all sorts of kisses, lad, from the sticky confection to the kiss of death. Of them all, the kiss of an actress is the most unnerving. How can we tell if she means it or if she's just practicing?....

Don't face the facts.

Try something new each day. After all, we're given life to find it out. It doesn't last forever.

Despair is your friend in show business. I don't believe you can act if happiness is your lot. It's the ups that keep you living and the downs that mete out talent.

Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.

So easy to fall into a rut, isn't it? Why should ruts be so comfortable and so unpopular?

At seventy-four I'm getting minor raves on my looks, but I'm caught in the middle. Who knows what seventy-four looks like? Who cares? But if I'd listened to my friends, I could now lie and say I'm eighty-four. For eighty-four, the way I look is spectacular.

Acting is the use of human experience with talent added ...

Aim above morality. If you apply that to life, then youre bound to live life fully.

Courage is like a muscle. We strengthen it by use.

Discussing how old you are is the temple of boredom.

Do people get moral when they don't get ahead?

If you believe, then you hang on. If you believe, it means you've got imagination, you don't need stuff thrown out on a blueprint, and don't face facts-what can stop you? If I don't make it today, I'll come in tomorrow.

Get the knack of getting people to help you and also pitch in yourself.

Anything that begins 'I don't know how to tell you this' is never good news.

Courage is like a strain of yoghurt culture, if you have some you can have some more.

I feel that much of the world's sorrow comes from people who are this, yet allow themselves to be treated as that.

I never got a job I didn't create for myself.

I think there is one smashing rule: never face the facts.

If you're thinking of becoming a critic, why not make other plans?

I'm sure the way to be happy is to live well beyond your means!

In our family we don't divorce our men - we bury them.

In the old days, ptomaine poisoning was a cover-all. If you missed a show and you were young, it meant you were having an abortion. If you were old, it meant you were having a face lift.

Life is getting through the moment. The philosopher William James says to cultivate the cheerful attitude. Now nobody had more trouble than he did -- except me. I had more trouble in my life than anybody. But your first big trouble can be a bonanza if you live through it. Get through the first trouble, you'll probably make it through the next one.

Live long enough and you'll come into pensions, a lovely thing. Presents every month from people you didn't know cared.

My body is on the earth, but my head is in the stars.

Sometimes what you want you don't get until you don't want it anymore.

The good that men do lives after them.

To be somebody, you must last.

To get it right, be born with luck or else make it. Never give up. A little money helps, but what really gets it right is to never face the facts.

Vice, virtue - it's best not to be too moral. You'll cheat yourself out of too much life.

When you finally learn how to do it, you're too old for the good parts.

You have to have a talent for having talent.

Your first big trouble can be a bonanza if you live through it. Get through the first trouble, and you'll probably make it through the next one.