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.
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.
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.
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.
I've always wanted two lives - one for the movies, one for myself.
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.
If you are blessed, you are blessed, whether you are married or single.
Is there anything better than to be longing for something, when you know it is within reach?
I'm afraid of NOTHING except being bored!
There seems to be a law that governs all our actions so I never make plans.
I have made enough faces.
[When asked if she believed in "women's lib":] Not really. Not when I see what most of them look like.
My talents fall within definite limitations. I am not as versatile an actress as some think.
I'm a completely worthless woman and no man should risk his life for me.
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.
Anyone who has a continuous smile on his face conceals a toughness that is almost frightening.
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.
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.
It is bitter to think of one's best years disappearing in this unpolished country.
I wish I were supernaturally strong so I could put right everything that is wrong.
I don’t like to talk to people, because I can’t express myself satisfactorily. I don’t say the things I mean.
I never said, 'I want to be alone.' I only said, 'I want to be let alone!' There is all the difference.
I want to be left alone.
Life would be so wonderful if we only knew what to do with it.
There is no one who would have me - I can't cook.
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.
I always look well when I'm near death.
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.
Every one of us lives this life just once, if we are honest, to live once is enough.
I live like a monk: with one toothbrush, one cake of soap, and a pot of cream.
I like the sea: we understand one another. It is always yearning, sighing for something it cannot have; and so am I.
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.
I cannot see myself as a wife. Ugly word.
It's midnight. One half of Paris is making love to the other half.
You don't have to be married to have a good friend as your partner for life.
I always wanted to do my best. I got nothing free—I had to work hard.
When one has not long to live, why shouldn't one have fancies?
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.
Except physically, we know little more about Garbo than we know about Shakespeare.
I smoke all the time, one after the other.
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.
I'm not always sincere. One can't be in this world, you know.
Gimme a visky with a ginger ale on the side - and don't be stinchy, beby.
If you’re going to die on screen, you’ve got to be strong and in good health.
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.
I don't like writers. They're dangerous people.
I'm tired and nervous and I'm in America. Here you don't know that you live.
I never met a man I could marry.
The mystery surrounding Garbo was as thick as a London fog.
Why should you care for a woman like me? I'm always nervous or sick, or sad or too gay.
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.
I only said, 'I want to be left alone.'
