Anita Loos Quotations

I really think that American gentlemen are the best after all, because kissing your hand may make you feel very good but a diamond and a sapphire bracelet lasts forever.

The rarest of all things in American life is charm. We spend billions every year manufacturing fake charm that goes under the heading of public relations. Without it, America would be grim indeed.

Pleasure that isn't paid for is as insipid as everything else that's free.

I always think that the most delightful thing about traveling is to always be running into Americans and to always feel at home.

On a plane you can pick up more and better people than on any other public conveyance since the stagecoach.

Show business is the best possible therapy for remorse.

There is a serious defect in the thinking of someone who wants - more than anything else - to become rich. As long as they don't have the money, it'll seem like a worthwhile goal. Once they do, they'll understand how important other things are - and have always been.

I once witnessed more ardent emotions between men at an Elks' Rally in Pasadena than they could ever have felt for the type of woman available to an Elk.

The people I'm furious with are the Women's Liberationists. They keep getting up on soapboxes and proclaiming women are brighter than men. That's true, but it should be kept quiet or it ruins the whole racket.

Kissing your hand may make you feel very very good but a diamond and sapphire bracelet lasts forever

When I was very young and first worked in Hollywood, the films had bred in me one sole ambition: to get away from them; to live inthe great world outside movies; to meet people who created their own situations through living them; who ad-libbed their own dialogue; whose jokes were not the contrivance of some gag writer.

with a mental equipment which allows me to tell the difference between hot and cold, I stand out in this community like a modern day Cicero. Dropped into any other city of the world, I'd rate as a possibly adequate night watchman.

In its heyday, Hollywood reflected, if it did not actually produce, the sexual climate of our land.

I've never known a Philadelphian who wasn't a downright 'character'; possibly a defense mechanism resulting from the dullness of their native habitat.

And a Famous Film Star who is left alone is more alone than any other person has ever been in the whole Histry of the World, because of the contrast to our normal enviromint.

Nobody can tell about this California climate. One minit its hot and the next minit its cold, so a person never knows what to hock.

Tallulah [Bankhead] never bored anyone, and I consider that humanitarianism of a very high order indeed.

I always say that a girl never really looks as well as she does on board a steamship, or even a yacht.

Always go to the solitary drinker for the truth!

And what, for instance, would have happened had Romeo and Juliet lived to middle age, their silhouettes broadened by pasta?

Fun is fun but no girl wants to laugh all of the time.

Gentlemen always seem to remember blondes.

That our popular art forms have become so obsessed with sex has turned the U.S.A into a nation of hobbledehoys; as if grown people don't have more vital concerns, such as taxes, inflation, dirty politics, earning a living, getting an education, or keeping out of jail.

The wrong side of the tracks is livelier.

A kiss on the hand may feel very, very good, but a diamond and sapphire bracelet lasts forever.

It's true that the French have a certain obsession with sex, but it's a particularly adult obsession. France is the thriftiest of all nations; to a Frenchman sex provides the most economical way to have fun. The French are a logical race.

Today there are no fairy tales for us to believe in, and this is possibly a reason for the universal prevalence of mental crack-up. Yes, if we were childish in the past, I wish we could be children once again.

Does this boat go to Europe, France?

In any service where a couple hold down jobs as a team, the male generally takes his ease while the wife labors at his job as wellas her own.

...In the past, as now, [Hollywood] was a stamping ground for tastelessness, violence, and hyperbole, but once upon a time it turned out a product which sweetened the flavor of life all over the world.

I began quite early in life to sense the thrill a girl attains in supplying money to a man.

Tallulah [Bankhead] was the foremost naughty girl of her era but, in those days, "naughty" meant piquant, whereas values have so changed that now, in the 1970s, it generally means nauseating.

From early Colonial days, sex life in America had been based on the custom of men supporting women. That situation reached its heyday in the Twenties when it was easy for any dabbler in stocks to flaunt his manhood by lavishing an unearned income on girls. But with the stock-market crash, men were hard put even to keep their wives, let alone spend money on sex outside the home. The adjustment was much easier on women than on men, who jumped out of windows in droves, whereas I can't recall a single headline that read: KEPT GIRL LEAPS FROM LOVE NEST.

Dorothy is th cool type of temperament who quite frequently thinks that two is a crowd.

I was making love to a man, a man I hardly even know. He was kissing the face off me and I was kissing the face off him. And I found it highly satisfactory.

There's nothing colder than chemistry.

So we came to the Ritz hotel and the Ritz Hotel was divine. Because when a girl can sit in a delightful bar and have delicious champagne cocktails and look at all the important French people in Paris, I think it is divine.

Gentlemen prefer blondes.

It isn't that gentlemen really prefer blondes, it's just that we look dumber.

... a bit of conversational sex makes a pleasant climate for creative effort ...

I was born in the theatre. My father was a small time impresario on the West Coast and I was acting from the age of 7, but I started to write when I was 12 and by the time I was 14 I was making more money than I was acting.

I've had my best times when trailing a Mainbocher evening gown across a sawdust floor. I've always loved high style in low company.

I used to think that looking across a pillow into the fabulous face of Buster Keaton would be a more thrilling destiny than any screen career.

One might feel that, at my age, I should look on life with more gravity. After all, I've been privileged to listen, firsthand, tosome of the most profound thinkers of my daywho were all beset by gloom over the condition the world had gotten into. Then why can't I view it with anything but amusement?

Men are weak and constantly need reassurance, so now that they fail to find adulation in the opposite sex, they're turning to each other. Less and less do men need women. More and more do gentlemen prefer gentlemen.

Men no longer prefer blondes. Today gentlemen seem to prefer gentlemen.

If we have to tell Hollywood good-by, it may be with one of those tender, old-fashioned, seven-second kisses exchanged between two people of the opposite sex, with all their clothes on.

Sometimes writers of no talent at all can write great acting scenes. Sometimes the very best writers can't write scenes that come to life.

I've always loved high style in low company.

If Hollywood hadn't existed, Elinor Glyn would have had to invent it.

I don't think the written word is important in movies anymore and the really great movies are done by great directors who in many cases write their own scripts. I think it's gotten to be more of a visual thing than an audible thing.

A girl with brains ought to do something with them besides think.

I don't like diabolism so I stay away from things like Clockwork Orange. I think diabolism is awfully childish. I don't even want to see The Godfather. I couldn't stand seeing that horse's head cut off. I wouldn't mind if it were Marlon Brando's.

Any girl who was a lady would not even think of having such a good time that she did not remember to hang on to her jewelry.

Fate keeps on happening.

Gentlemen prefer blondes... but gentlemen marry brunettes.

I'm furious about the Women's Liberationists. They keep getting up on soap-boxes and proclaiming that women are brighter than men. That's true, but it should be kept very quiet or it ruins the whole racket.

Memory is more indelible than ink.

So this gentleman said a girl with brains ought to do something else with them besides think.

So then Dr Froyd said all I needed was to cultivate a few inhibitions and get some sleep.

Tallulah never bored anyone, and I consider that humanitarianism of a very high order indeed.

I'm furious about the women's liberationists. They keep getting up on soapboxes and proclaiming that women are brighter than men. That's true, but it should be kept very quiet or it ruins the whole racket.