Lily Tomlin

"The art of acting is the art of listening."

"The opposite of talking is not listening—it's waiting."

"I'm interested in all kinds of beauty. I think there's more than one definition."

"You know what I worry about? That there's someone thinking about me and I don't know it."

"We use the word 'impossible' far too much."

"Sometimes I feel like a figment of my own imagination."

"If you read a lot of books you are considered well read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you're not considered well viewed."

"The biggest lie I tell myself is that I don't have time."

"Desire is a contract you make with yourself."

"If I had to live my life over again, I would try to make fewer mistakes, but the same mistakes if possible."

"Everything I know, I learned after I was thirty."

"The question is not whether we can afford to spend money on education; it is whether we can afford not to."

"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."

"Tact is for people who aren't witty enough to be rude."

"If you can't be direct, at least be oblique in an interesting way."

"The trick is to look for patterns in chaos."

"Life is full of surprises; I'm still trying to be surprised properly."

"I don't care what you think about me. I don't think about you at all."

"Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, and honest. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity."

"Just keep going. The road to success is always under construction."

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end."

"The secret of my success is that I bite off more than I can chew and chew as fast as I can."

"In the future, there will be fewer and fewer jobs that a machine cannot do better than a person."

"I said, 'I want to be happy, not right.' That changed everything."

"We're all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if all we're looking for is someone we can feel uncontaminated with, then we are not going to find lasting happiness."

"What a wonderful time to be alive! I feel like I'm just beginning."

"You know, I've learned you can't be cynical every day."

"The most characteristic thing about modern times is the noise."

"If I lost my breasts, would I be less of a person? The answer is yes."

"Sometimes I'm thinking of doing something and then I think, don't do it."