Mae West

"I wrote all my best songs about the men in my life."

"One of the hardest things in this world is to admit you are wrong."

"I invented my life by taking for granted that everything I did, every encounter, was an opportunity to reveal more of who I was."

"When I'm good, I'm very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better."

"All discarded lovers should be given a second chance, but with somebody else."

"I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it."

"The only time I really become aware of mortality is when I see a woman my age trying to act twenty-five."

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

"It's always better to be looked at than looked over."

"I admire any man who knows what he wants and goes after it with passion."

"A dame that knows the ropes isn't likely to get tied up."

"The best way to handle a man is with kindness and a baseball bat."

"I believe that it's better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone else."

"Give a man a free hand and he'll try to put it all over you."

"I see you're a man with a strong will. There are easier ways to lose it."

"Monogamy is the Western custom of one wife and hardly any mistresses."

"I've been in more laps than a napkin."

"When a woman knows what she wants, she's dangerous."

"I'm not interested in how people think. I'm interested in how they think."

"Life's too short to be bored."

"Good girls go to heaven; bad girls go everywhere."

"I've been in the business of selling myself since I was fifteen."

"I want no women in my life, yet I like all women."

"The story of my life is about back entrances, secret elevators, and restricted passes."

"Every man I meet wants to protect me. I can't figure out what from."

"I'm a woman of very few words, but lots of action."

"Flattery is my weakness—please go ahead and lay it on me."

"I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being."

"I wrote my plays for people to enjoy, not to analyze."

"The future of the theatre is in the unconventional."