Popular

Browse Popular Topics

Quotes by Beatrice Arthur

After being in the business for such a long time, I've done everything but rodeo and porno.
– Beatrice Arthur
After I realized that I wasn't going to get any acting work, I thought I would try nightclubs. And I got hired immediately at a very fancy supper club. But three nights later I was let go. The manager told me that I was so tall, so imposing, so obviously in charge that nobody was going to believe me... so he said I should try comedy... and I've been hooked ever since.
– Beatrice Arthur
At least I'm not playing other people for a change. It's a very odd place to be... I feel I'm an actress who sings a bit.
– Beatrice Arthur
From your mouth to God's ears.
– Beatrice Arthur
I actually talk a lot about how TV has changed.
– Beatrice Arthur
I can't imagine working without and audience. And we had a great cast in both shows. And the great writers, directors-I was extremely lucky.
– Beatrice Arthur
I met Billy Goldenberg, my musical director and composer, who's earned 32 Emmy nominations by the way, in 1981.
– Beatrice Arthur
I really cut my teeth on off-off-off Broadway shows.
– Beatrice Arthur
I said that in the show-that at age 8 I was already 5'8 1/2 and had a deep voice, but that's not true. I do know I was always taller than anyone, maybe taller than the teacher, I don't remember.
– Beatrice Arthur
I suddenly realized that comedy, for me, was just being honest, and playing it for real. I've seen so many wonderful actors who turn into creatures from another planet when they're told they are supposed to be playing comedy.
– Beatrice Arthur
I thought nobody would come just to see me sing. I knew it would have to be an evening of comedy, also.
– Beatrice Arthur
I was in Threepenny Opera, and I left it to understudy for Tallulah. That's how I got my Equity card.
– Beatrice Arthur
I watch news programs and I love Comedy Central. I love The Daily Show-it's smarter than anything else. I also like The Critic and Celebrity Death Match and South Park. I love all of that.
– Beatrice Arthur
I... was not too happy to suddenly take on this public role thrust upon me. They just assumed I was the Joan of Arc of the women's movement. And I wasn't at all. It put a lot of unnecessary pressure on me.
– Beatrice Arthur
I'm having so much damned fun. Especially once I heard the audience response.
– Beatrice Arthur
I'm not playing a role. I'm being myself, whatever the hell that is.
– Beatrice Arthur
I'm really not an invalid.
– Beatrice Arthur
I'm using things that happened to me. Recollections of situations and friends.
– Beatrice Arthur
I've done musical revues mostly.
– Beatrice Arthur
It didn't dawn on me that we were older/elderly women. Later, of course, people felt we were doing so much to further the cause of mature women.
– Beatrice Arthur
It was like the Beatles had arrived, you know. These four elderly ladies, and they were screaming for us-screaming for us. It was wonderful.
– Beatrice Arthur
It's a very difficult thing to master. I don't think that many people have the light touch that comedy commands.
– Beatrice Arthur
It's difficult, since Rue lives in New York now, and Estelle is not well at all. It's very sad. Of course, while you're working, you're like family. You swear you'll never lose each other, and then of course you do.
– Beatrice Arthur
Keep fighting for animals by making compassionate, cruelty-free choices every day and encouraging those around you to do the same.
– Beatrice Arthur
Lucy was lovely.
– Beatrice Arthur
Lucy-my God, Lucy was a brilliant, brilliant clown, but she was terribly miscast. But we would have never gotten the money for the production if she hadn't wanted to do it.
– Beatrice Arthur
Making lasting gifts for animals in our estate plans is perhaps the single most important thing we can do to ensure animals have the strongest possible voice for their protection.
– Beatrice Arthur
My opening night at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis... has a thrust stage. I thought I was walking into the wings, and I walked right into the pit.
– Beatrice Arthur
My vagina can't give a monologue!
– Beatrice Arthur
No fruit. No veggie.
– Beatrice Arthur
PETA has a proven track record of success. Each victory PETA wins for the animals is a stepping stone upon which we build a more compassionate world for all beings - and we will never give up our fight until all animals are treated with respect and kindness.
– Beatrice Arthur
The head of the school took one look at me-this tall lady with enormous breasts... and a very deep voice-and cast me in all of these classical parts, Clytemnaestra and lots of Shakespeare. Then it came as a great shock after I graduated that Broadway was not hiring young American Shakespearean actors.
– Beatrice Arthur
There were subjects we tackled that had never been even discussed, like I had an abortion. Nobody ever talked about that.
– Beatrice Arthur
Well, Marlon had graduated from my school a couple of years earlier. But we were together at the Actor's Studio. Everybody was there, Jimmy Dean... And back then I saw Laurence Olivier in The Entertainer, James Earl Jones in The Great White Hope... She's an old lady now-Judith Anderson! I saw her play Medea. It was so exciting; there was so much theater to see.
– Beatrice Arthur
When something is written for the stage, I think it's wrong to try to make it bigger. Very few things out there make that jump easily.
– Beatrice Arthur
You knew by looking at what they were wearing what their characters were. Betty always wore some kind of a shirt-dress with little buttons, and Rue, of course, wore these things that were such outlandishly bad taste.
– Beatrice Arthur
You know, I spend most of my life turning things down. There's a lot of crap out there.
– Beatrice Arthur
You know, the way I'm accepted, I almost feel like Judy Garland, truly. It makes no sense to me because I don't think that I've been any more outspoken... Or maybe I have, I don't know. But everyone I know supports anything that has to do with raising money or with AIDS.
– Beatrice Arthur