A rich man can afford to be generous to many.
Alcohol is a very patient drug. It will wait for the alcoholic to pick it up one more time.
All my life I had been fulfilling right conditions and expecting good results. I know that I am and will always be essentially alone.
All the dapper gentlemen, all like my father... young and old.
All the way from Seattle I had been bumped up into first class because the captain liked me in the movies.
Aside from my son, no person has ever shown for me the gentle concern I knew from Governor Adlai Stevenson.
At awards time, The Exorcist was nominated in 11 categories, everybody but the janitor was up for an Oscar. There was no category for what I did.
At the beginning of the war I had married the boy I had known for two weeks. When he came home, we were strangers. The marriage died.
Canadians are inclined to leap a lot, particularly if anyone is watching. When you've seen one leaping Canadian, you've seen them all.
God bless the Screen Actors Guild. It went to bat for me.
I accepted the role of the Demon in the film The Exorcist in 1973.
I am a person who needs heroes and heroines.
I am responsible for no one but myself.
I am rich from the bequests other gifted people have seen fit to leave to me.
I believe in joy, but I believe in the flip-side, agony.
I can choose to accelerate my disease to an alcoholic death or incurable insanity, or I can choose to live within my thoroughly human condition.
I can only know what love is insofar as I can feel it.
I cannot sustain hate for longer than a couple of years.
I didn't find it difficult to call my mother's spirit to tell her I hoped she knew that the only thing that ever stood between herself and me had been a mirror!
I don't think I should have been married... to anybody.
I don't think the Hollywood community is interested in what I can do. That's all right. I've never looked for a job in my life, and I'm not going to start now. I have plenty to keep me busy.
I drank like everybody else, for a while.
I find it next to impossible to remain politely silent when people prate to me about the glory of being given another chance to live happily ever after!
I have always had a lot more trouble with my truths than with my deceits.
I have no use for people who hunt for what they call sport.
I have reached a state in life where I can buy a whole house full of chairs and can bump into them until they are black and blue.
I lose all control after two drinks of anything.
I loved playing the part of the feisty Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker.
I never wanted a Guardian Angel. I didn't ask for one. One was assigned to me.
I think The Exorcist was the hardest work I've ever done.
I was an Irish Catholic Democrat who had lost two sons. I was within shouting distance of Mrs. Rose Kennedy.
I was taught to be anti-Jewish.
I'd never been in play long enough for the flowers to die in the dressing room.
I'd stand in line for Confession with old people and little kids, and as the line moved up, I knew when I got into the box that I would lie! Again!
I'm glad I am a woman who once danced naked in the Mediterranean Sea at midnight.
I've always had bronchitis. I've been administered the Sacrament of Death three times for it.
If I had taken one-tenth of all the prescriptions prescribed for me, I would be long since dead. I never did take much medicine.
If I have to climb to heaven on a ladder, I shall decline the invitation.
It is a remarkably beautiful piece of home furnishing, the Oscar. I used to keep it up in front of a mirror so that it looked like two.
Jimmy Dean and I would say to each other, If you weren't here, I'd kill myself, on the set of Giant.
Joan Crawford is a movie queen. I had never met one before. I know now what I don't want to be.
Like many alcoholics, I was a staggering woman in a chic apartment, sick and utterly disgusting.
More than anything, I am grateful for not being in prison.
Most people call me Mercy. I like it.
Mrs. Kennedy told me I must walk three and one-half miles a day through all the weather of the year if I would keep my figure.
My admiration for the phenomenon of Alcoholics Anonymous is boundless.
My body lacks certain faculties, certain vitally needed faculties to burn off and throw off alcohol.
My name is real, which probably explains why I never became a superstar... how would that look in lights?
My only true harmony lies deep within my soul, wherever that is. I know that somehow I am in tune with the universe.
My second marriage had a lot to do with alcohol.
Neiman-Marcus is one thing, and the Dallas Cowboys are another.
One can't always count on the serenity of a city at midnight.
One in three people pop some kind of drug to alter reality.
One of the cruelest judgments sustained against me is that I have spoken out as a recovered alcoholic to stimulate my acting career.
Only a certain breed of actor should ever even try to work for Orson Welles. I'm glad I'm one of that breed.
Room 200 qualified as a legitimate part of the Algonquin Hotel. There is even a small and select cult of those of us who have called it home.
So many people have really wanted to die. They seem ashamed to say so. I think it would help if they would say so.
The great people I've met always have time for the niceties.
The last thing in the world I wanted to do was drink the wine vinegar. I tried.
The most amazing thing about me is that I am still here.
There are zillions of people who say that alcoholism is a disease, but not many of them believe it.
When I am rehearsing for a play, I try to read nothing that might distract my concentration from the work in progress.
With two leftover husbands to account for, my wicked soul has just about shriveled and died.
Young Jimmy Dean fell off the world as suddenly as he had come.
Mercedes was given a cowboy hat as a gift by Gary Cooper, and she wore it in filming Giant (1956).
Mercedes had one son, John Lawrence Fifield, who killed himself, his wife and children in 1987.
Mercedes fought numerous times with co-star Joan Crawford, who was jealous of her youth and attractive looks, on and off the set of Johnny Guitar (1954). After one fight, Crawford took Mercedes' clothes and scattered them down an Arizona highway near the filming location, and the film crew as well as Mercedes went to pick them up.
Mercedes worked with Orson Welles in his Mercury Theater and with Agnes Moorehead there. She later played the nemesis of Moorehead's Endora character, Carlotta, on the Bewitched episode "Darrin Gone! and Forgotten?"
Mercedes won 2 Golden Globes in 1950, one for Best Supporting Actress in All The King's Men (1949) and the other for Most Promising Newcomer.
Mercedes won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1950 for All The King's Men (1949) and was nominated for it again in 1957 for Giant (1956).
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