Top 70 Quotes & Sayings by Ava Gardner

Mama, you know, poor baby, she'd had her family all finished: four daughters and a couple of sons, and suddenly, I arrived in her midlife on Christmas Eve 1922.

To be possessed when you are a child is just a wonderful feeling. It makes you feel safe. It makes you feel loved. But later if anyone tried to possess me - oh boy, I was out of there.

I fell down in Hyde Park with a friend who'd had a hip operation, and neither of us could get up again. People must have thought we were a couple of drunks rolling around and walked on by.

What's the point? My face, shall we say, looks lived in.

I hate journalists. I don't trust them.

It's a pity nobody believes in simple lust anymore.

Nobody could pile on the applesauce like Mickey. He was the best liar in the world - well, Frank Sinatra can tell a good story, too, but I don't believe he was ever unfaithful to me.

The marriages to Mickey and Artie were easy come, easy go. I called them my 'starter husbands!'

I suffered, I really suffered, with all three of my husbands. And I tried damn hard with all three, starting each marriage certain that it was going to last until the end of my life. Yet none of them lasted more than a year or two.

I was born with good health and a strong body and spent years abusing them.

I have only one rule in acting - trust the director and give him heart and soul.

It's a shame that it didn't work out with Mick. I was hopelessly in love with him.

I'm not saying my own looks don't give the game away. Nothing I can do about that anymore. A nip and tuck ain't gonna do it.

When you get to be my age, baby, you have to pay time more respect.

I did a lot of hokey movies when I was starting out at MGM. Good and bad, mostly bad.

I never played a woman who was smarter than me.

It's fine being stared at as a pretty girl, but not as a freak. When I tried to make myself ugly, they said, 'Oh, she's lost her looks.'

Because I was promoted as a sort of a siren and played all those sexy broads, people made the mistake of thinking I was like that off the screen. They couldn't have been more wrong.

I think the most vulgar thing about Hollywood is the way it believes its own gossip.

Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.

I do owe Mickey one thing: he taught me how much I enjoyed sex.

There was no way the marriages could have survived. Nor do I regret that they didn't.

I go on tremendous health kicks - exercise, yogurt, no booze. Of course, I smoke too much.

Mickey - the smallest husband I ever had and the biggest mistake I ever made - well, that year, it was.

I think the main reason my marriages failed is that I always loved too well but never wisely.

Although no one believes me, I have always been a country girl and still have a country girl's values

Fame gives you everything you never wanted.

I want to remember it all, the good times and the bad times, the late nights, the boozing, the dancing into dawns, and all the great and not-so-great people I met and loved in those years.

What I'd really like to say about stardom is that it gave me everything I never wanted.

I either write the book or sell the jewels. And I'm kinda sentimental about the jewels.

I don't mind growing old. If I have to go before my time, this is how I'll go-- cigarette in one hand, glass of scotch in the other.

For the loot, honey, for the loot.

Doing nothing feels like floating on warm water to me. Delightful, perfect.

After my screen test, the director clapped his hands gleefully and yelled: “She can't talk! She can't act! She's sensational!”

The truth is that the only time I'm happy is when I'm doing absolutely nothing. I don't understand people who like to work and talk about it like it was some sort of goddamn duty. Doing nothing feel like floating on warm water to me. Delightful, perfect.

I dealt with men who had tempers, and who could get violent-Lord knows how I had to defend myself against Howard Hughes and Frank Sinatra, and from Artie Shaw's verbal abuse. But George [C. Scott] was a different category of animal when he got drunk. He'd break into my hotel room, which he did in Italy, London and at the Beverly Hills Hotel, attack me to where I was frightened for my life, and scream, 'Why won't you marry me?' Well, I would never marry a man who couldn't control his liquor. Me, I'm a happy drunk. I laugh, I dance. I certainly don't break bottles and threaten to kill.

When you have to face up to the fact that marriage to the man you love is really over, that's very tough, sheer agony. In that kind of harrowing situation, I always go away and cut myself off from the world. Also, I sober up immediately when there is genuine bad news in my life; I never face it with alcohol in my brain. I just rented a house in Palm Springs and sat there and just suffered for a couple of weeks. I suffered there until I was strong enough to face it.

I am deeply superficial.

Women's liberation as a movement makes some valid points. But in the final analysis, it doesn't matter who wears the pants - as long as there's money in the pockets.

Elizabeth Taylor is not beautiful, she is pretty—I was beautiful.

When I lose my temper, honey, you can't find it any place.

I wish to live to 150 years old, but the day I die, I wish it to be with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other.

Sex isn't all that important, but it is when you love someone very much.

It’s a pity nobody believes in simple lust anymore.

I do everything for a reason. Most of the time the reason is money.

Don't think for a minute that bad publicity and endless criticism don't leave their claw marks on everyone concerned. Your friends try to cheer you up by saying lightly, "I suppose you get used to it, and ignore it." You try. You try damned hard. But you never get used to it. It always wounds and hurts.

I've certainly never taken the care of myself that I should have. On the contrary. I've done a lot of late nights without enough sleep and all that. But I've had fun. Whatever wrinkles are there, I've enjoyed getting them.

Because I was promoted as a sort of a siren and played all those sexy broads, people made the mistake of thinking I was like that off the screen. They couldn't have been more wrong

Petting is the study of the anatomy in braille.

I hate cheating. I won’t put up with it. I don’t do it myself.

Maybe, in the final analysis, they saw me as something I wasn't and I tried to turn them into something they could never be. I loved them all but maybe I never understood any of them. I don't think they understood me.

Love is nothing but a pain in the ass

Hollywood - that's a place where love is viewed both pragmatically and philosophically in the saying, 'Tis better to have loved and divorced than never to have had any publicity at all.

Oh, what the hell did I know? I went to the set the first day in full makeup and the director told me to take it off. So I did the film without makeup. I had nothing to do with anything I did. I never understood why I was so famous.

All I have going is my looks. When my beauty goes, I'm through.

Our phone bills were astronomical, and when I found the letters Frank wrote me the other day, the total could fill a suitcase. Every single day during our relationship, no matter where in the world I was, I'd get a telegram from Frank saying he loved me and missed me. He was a man who was deseperate for companionship and love. Can you wonder that he always had mine!

When I'm old and gray, I want to have a house by the sea. And paint. With a lot of wonderful chums, good music, and booze around. And a damn good kitchen to cook in.

Fame and fortune does not mean anything if you don't have a happy home.

If I had my life to live over again, I'd live it the same way. Maybe a few changes here or there, but nothing special. The truth is, honey, I've enjoyed my life. I've had a hell of a good time.

Sing me not a song; let me hear your recital of veneration and respect; this I will listen to over and over when I share your need of pleasing.