"They’re not really so different. You know the old thing, comedy and tragedy are akin? Like lots of old things, it’s the truth. Back of all comedy, there is tragedy; back of every good belly-laugh there is a familiarity with things not funny at all. There must be. You laugh with tears in your eyes, don’t you?"

“At first thought , we might say, 'our job is to win a war'...but I am sure it would be closer to the hearts of all of us to say, 'We are fighting a war to assure a peace...our kind of peace.'”

“I have no kicks at all fact is I'm pretty happy about the whole thing...I enjoy this country. I like the parks and the highways and the good schools and everything that this Government does.”

“I do walk off sets but not for the reasons you might suppose. I’m not temperamental about myself. I can take care of myself all right. But I do get temperamental when I hear some little would-be Napoleon of a director, some little killer-diller of a petty czar cursing out extras, grips, electricians. I’ve walked off sets when things like that happen. And will again, if and when they happen again. I’ve said to the pettifogging Nappies, ‘Why don’t you bawl me out if that’s the way you feel about it? You don’t dare to bawl the stars out, do you? They could bark right back at you, couldn’t they? So you have to light on the little fellows, the ones who can’t talk back, don’t you?’ It’s an obsession with me.”

“I love my work and I take it seriously. And I love everything I do and give everything I’ve got to whatever I’m doing. But I do not go about clutching my Career to an otherwise naked bosom. If my work were to be taken away from me tomorrow I wouldn’t be stopped. I’d go on living, and still love it. There are a thousand things I could do, would do, would want to do. I’m like old Solomon. If he’d lost one of his wives he wouldn’t exactly have been a widower. I couldn’t be widowed by the loss of any one facet of my life. Because it’s too rich, life is too abundant.”

“Carole Lombard's tragic death means that something of gaiety and beauty have been taken from the world at a time they are needed most.”

“Being poor didn’t matter a bit. I didn’t mind a bit. Wouldn’t mind living in a ground-floor right now—you can get out the back door faster!”