Top 57 Quotes & Sayings by Greta Garbo

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Swedish actress Greta Garbo.

Last updated on September 17, 2024.

Greta Garbo was a Swedish-American actress. Regarded as one of the greatest actresses to ever be on screen, she was known for her melancholic, somber persona, her many film portrayals of tragic characters, and her subtle and understated performances. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Garbo fifth on its list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema.

Swedish - Actress | September 18, 1905 - April 15, 1990

Source: Wikipedia

The story of my life is about back entrances, side doors, secret elevators and other ways of getting in and out of places so that people won't bother me.

Greta Garbo

Being a movie star, and this applies to all of them, means being looked at from every possible direction. You are never left at peace, you're just fair game.

Greta Garbo

It is bitter to think of one's best years disappearing in this unpolished country.

Greta Garbo

I don't want to be a silly temptress. I cannot see any sense in getting dressed up and doing nothing but tempting men in pictures.

Greta Garbo

There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person. They are you, your private joys and sorrows, and you can never tell them. You cheapen yourself, the inside of yourself, when you tell them.

Greta Garbo

I smoke all the time, one after the other.

Greta Garbo

Is there anything better than to be longing for something, when you know it is within reach?

Greta Garbo

There seems to be a law that governs all our actions so I never make plans.

Greta Garbo

Life would be so wonderful if we only knew what to do with it.

Greta Garbo

If you are blessed, you are blessed, whether you are married or single.

Greta Garbo

Anyone who has a continuous smile on his face conceals a toughness that is almost frightening.

Greta Garbo

This is where I have wasted the best years of my life.

Greta Garbo

You don't have to be married to have a good friend as your partner for life.

Greta Garbo

If only those who dream about Hollywood knew how difficult it all is.

Greta Garbo

My talents fall within definite limitations. I am not as versatile an actress as some think.

Greta Garbo

I never said, 'I want to be alone.' I only said, 'I want to be left alone.' There is all the difference.

Greta Garbo

Your joys and sorrows. You can never tell them. You cheapen the inside of yourself if you do tell them.

Greta Garbo

I want to be alone.

Greta Garbo

I wish I were supernaturally strong so I could put right everything that is wrong.

Greta Garbo

I'm tired and nervous and I'm in America. Here you don't know that you live.

Greta Garbo

There is no one who would have me - I can't cook.

Greta Garbo

There are some who want to get married and others who don't. I have never had an impulse to go to the altar. I am a difficult person to lead.

Greta Garbo

it's difficult in Hollywood to be allowed to try anything. It's all a terrible compromise. There is no time for art. All that matters is what they call box office.

Greta Garbo

I'm a completely worthless woman and no man should risk his life for me.

Greta Garbo

I like the sea: we understand one another. It is always yearning, sighing for something it cannot have; and so am I.

Greta Garbo

I want to be left alone.

Greta Garbo

[When asked if she believed in "women's lib":] Not really. Not when I see what most of them look like.

Greta Garbo

It's midnight. One half of Paris is making love to the other half.

Greta Garbo

The mystery surrounding Garbo was as thick as a London fog.

Greta Garbo

Mr. Hitler was big on me. He kept writing and inviting me to come to Germany, and if the war hadn't started when it did, I would have gone and I would have taken a gun out of my purse and shot him, because I am the only person who would not have been searched.

Greta Garbo

All alike, you men. You only want the satisfaction of being through with us first, that's all. So far I've had the good fortune of beating you to it. So I am heartless.

Greta Garbo

Love is a romantic designation for a most ordinary biological process-or, shall we say, chemical-process ... a lot of nonsense is talked and written about it.

Greta Garbo

If you’re going to die on screen, you’ve got to be strong and in good health.

Greta Garbo

I've always wanted two lives - one for the movies, one for myself.

Greta Garbo

I only said, 'I want to be left alone.'

Greta Garbo

I'm not always sincere. One can't be in this world, you know.

Greta Garbo

I always wanted to do my best. I got nothing free—I had to work hard.

Greta Garbo

It could be so beautiful here if the Americans themselves had not made it so ugly with their big buildings, their millions of cars, and noise.

Greta Garbo

Perhaps it's better if I live in your heart, where the world can't see me. If I'm dead, there will be no stain on our love.

Greta Garbo

How can one change one's entire life and build a new one on one moment of love? And yet, that's what you make me want to close my eyes and do.

Greta Garbo

Why haven't I got a husband and children?" mused Greta Garbo to the Dutchess of Windsor, "I never met a man I could marry.

Greta Garbo

I was always sad as a child, for as long as I can think back. I hated crowds of people, and used to sit in a corner by myself, just thinking.

Greta Garbo

Why should you care for a woman like me? I'm always nervous or sick, or sad or too gay.

Greta Garbo

I live like a monk: with one toothbrush, one cake of soap, and a pot of cream.

Greta Garbo

I never met a man I could marry.

Greta Garbo

When one has not long to live, why shouldn't one have fancies?

Greta Garbo

I don't like writers. They're dangerous people.

Greta Garbo

I always look well when I'm near death.

Greta Garbo

Gimme a visky with a ginger ale on the side - and don't be stinchy, beby.

Greta Garbo

Garbo still belongs to that moment in cinema when capturing the human face still plunged audiences into the deepest ecstasy, when one literally lost oneself in a human image as one would in a philtre, when the face represented a kind of absolute state of the flesh, which could be neither reached nor renounced.

Greta Garbo

Except physically, we know little more about Garbo than we know about Shakespeare.

Greta Garbo

I never said, 'I want to be alone.' I only said, 'I want to be let alone!' There is all the difference.

Greta Garbo

I'm afraid of NOTHING except being bored!

Greta Garbo

Every one of us lives this life just once, if we are honest, to live once is enough.

Greta Garbo

I don’t like to talk to people, because I can’t express myself satisfactorily. I don’t say the things I mean.

Greta Garbo

I cannot see myself as a wife. Ugly word.