Audrey Hepburn Quotes

Audrey Hepburn shares candid, unpredictable reflections on self-growth and affection.

68 quotes

1. You have to look at yourself objectively. Analyze yourself like an instrument. You have to be absolutely frank with yourself. Face your handicaps, don't try to hide them. Instead, develop something else.

2. I am more than ever awed and overwhelmed by the monumental talents it was my great, great privilege to work for and with. There is therefore no way I can thank you for this beautiful award without thanking all of them, because it is they who helped and honed, triggered and taught, pushed and pulled, dressed and photographed - and with endless patience and kindness and gentleness, guided and nurtured a totally unknown, insecure, inexperienced, skinny broad into a marketable commodity. I am proud to have been in a business that gives pleasure, creates beauty, and awakens our conscience, arouses compassion, and perhaps most importantly, gives millions a respite from our so violent world. Thank you, Screen Actors Guild and friends, for this huge honor - and for giving me this unique opportunity to express my deepest gratitude and love to all of those who have given me a career that has brought me nothing but happiness.

3. I can testify to what UNICEF means to children, because I was among those who received food and medical relief right after World War II,I have a long-lasting gratitude and trust for what UNICEF does.

4. Always be a first rate version of yourself.

5. I'm half-Irish, half-Dutch, and I was born in Belgium. If I was a dog, I'd be in a hell of a mess!

6. Some people dream of having a big swimming pool - with me, it's closets.

7. I can take long walks, as I understand Greta Garbo does, and no one interferes with my thoughts and tranquility. Come to think of it, the other day I was on Fifth Avenue in New York and I saw a woman who could very well have been Garbo; I was a bit tempted to go up to her, but then I thought, 'My God, practice what you preach! If it is her, you'll be intruding - just the thing you don't like yourself.'

8. Living is not like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can't take it all in at once.

9. I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people's minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing.

10. I never thought I'd land in pictures with a face like mine.

11. I probably hold the distinction of being one movie star who, by all laws of logic, should never have made it. At each stage of my career, I lacked the experience.

12. I was born with an enormous need for affection, and a terrible need to give it.

13. If I blow my nose, it gets written all over the world.

14. If I get married, I want to be very married.

15. My look is attainable. Women can look like Audrey Hepburn by flipping out their hair, buying the large sunglasses, and the little sleeveless dresses.

16. Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you're exactly the same.

17. As a child, I was taught that it was bad manners to bring attention to yourself, and to never, ever make a spectacle of yourself... All of which I've earned a living doing.

18. I was born with something that appealed to an audience at that particular time...I acted instinctively. I've had one of the greatest schools of all - a whole row of great, great directors.

19. I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it's the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. It's probably the most important thing in a person.

20. People associate me with a time when movies were pleasant, when women wore pretty dresses in films and you heard beautiful music. I always love it when people write me and say 'I was having a rotten time, and I walked into a cinema and saw one of your movies, and it made such a difference.'

21. Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles is not a realist.

22. This could be the last and only opportunity I'd have to work with the great and lovely Audrey, and I was not missing it.

23. You take the Monroes and the Terry Moores, and you know just what you're going to get every time. With Audrey it's kind of unpredictable. She's like a good tennis player - she varies her shots.

24. I think that there are few people in one's life that you never really feel that they're gone. I have to remind myself that she isn't around.

25. You've got to learn to like yourself a little more.

26. All I want for Christmas is another movie with Audrey Hepburn.

27. The slimmest waist since the Civil War. You could get a dog collar around it.

28. She was the love of my life.

29. I was determined to wipe Audrey out of my mind by screwing a woman in every country I visited. My plan succeeded, though sometimes with difficulty. When I was in Bangkok, I was with a Thai girl in a boat in one of the klongs. I guess we got too animated, because the boat tipped over and I fell into the filthy water. Back at the hotel I poured alcohol in my ears because I was afraid I'd become infected with the plague.' When I got back to Hollywood, I went to Audrey's dressing-room and told her what I had done. You know what she sad? 'Oh, Bill!' That's all. 'Oh, Bill!'. Just as though I were some naughty boy.'

30. She's as good as the other Hepburn.

31. I can't stand it! I know I've got the best tits on stage, and yet they're all staring at a girl who hasn't got any!

32. Audrey was meek, gentle and ethereal, understated both in her life and in her work. She walked among us with a light pace, as if she didn't want to be noticed. I regret losing her as a friend, as a role model, and as a companion to my youthful dreams.

33. I had plenty of qualms about Audrey when we met for the first rehearsal, but from then on, working with her was one big kick... Audrey and I decided we'd throw a party for the cast and the crew when the picture was finished. We went all out, had it catered by Romanoff's - nothing but the best. In the middle of the party, Audrey sidled up to me, jabbed me with her elbow, and said, out of the corner of her mouth, 'Hey, Shirl-Girl, whattaya think the bruise is gonna be for this bash?'

34. I don't want to be ungallant, but Audrey's too old and wrinkled for me.

35. When we climbed out of the airplane [in Beijing], to my amazement I saw about two hundred little Chinese Audrey Hepburns waiting at the airport. Roman Holiday was playing in China for the first time - thirty years after we made it - and attracting enormous crowds. Everywhere we went we saw little Audrey Hepburns with the bangs and the long skirts.'

36. It was my good luck during that wonderful summer in Rome, to be the first of her screen fellows, to hold out my hand, and help her keep her balance as she did her spins and pirouttes. Those months were probably the happiest experience I ever had making movies.

37. After so many drive-in waitresses becoming movie stars, there has been this real drought, when along came class; somebody who actually went to school, can spell, maybe even plays the piano. She may be a wispy, thin little thing, but when you see that girl, you know you're really in the presence of something. In that league there's only ever been Garbo, and the other Hepburn, and maybe Bergman. It's a rare quality, but boy, do you know when you've found it.

38. This girl, singlehanded, may make bosoms a thing of the past.

39. And the beauty of a woman, with passing years only grows!

40. Water is life, and clean water means health.

41. I don't need a bedroom to prove my womanliness. I can convey just as much sex appeal picking apples off a tree or standing in the rain.

42. You can only hope to get a combination of happy work and a happy life.

43. True beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul.

44. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.

45. Promise me one thing: don't take me home until I'm drunk - very drunk indeed.

46. It's sad if people think that's (homemaking) a dull existance, [but] you can't just buy an apartment and furnish it and walk away. It's the flowers you choose, the music you play, the smile you have waiting. I want it to be gay and cheerful, a haven in this troubled world. I don't want my husband and children to come home and find a rattled woman. Our era is already rattled enough, isn't it?

47. I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it's the think I like the most, so laugh, It cures a multitude of ills.It's probably the most important thing in a person.

48. My first big mission for UNICEF in Ethiopia was just to attract attention, before it was too late, to conditions which threatened the whole country. My role was to inform the world, to make sure that the people of Ethiopia were not forgotten.

49. If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.

50. I've always had- how shall I say it? -the prize at the end. My whole life shows that.

51. I am not beautiful. My mother once called me an ugly duckling. But,listed separately, I have a few good features.

52. I believe, every day, you should have at least one exquisite moment.

53. No. The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long; you're just sad, that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling? Well, when I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump in a cab and go to Tiffany's. Calms me down right away. The quietness and the proud look of it. Nothing very bad could happen to you there. If I could find a real-life place that'd make me feel like Tiffany's, then - then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name!

54. Good things aren't supposed to just fall into your lap. God is very generous, but He expects you to do your part first.

55. To have beautiful lips, say beautiful things. To have beautiful eyes, look at people and see the good in them.

56. I went through a period of first successes. Then there was the inevitable change: the bad newspaper articles. Some people don't care about that, but I do. I'm hurt. I feel it. I don't think I've done anything dreadful. Sometimes you do things for reasons the press doesn't know. But I'm happy to go on as I have.

57. The beauty of a woman is not the clothes she wears, the figure she carries or the way she combs her hair.

58. My life isn’t theories and formulae. It’s part instinct, part common sense. Logic is as good a word as any, and I’ve absorbed what logic I have from everything and everyone… from my mother, from training as a ballet dancer, from Vogue magazine, from the laws of life and health and nature.

59. It's that wonderful old-fashioned idea that others come first and you come second. This was the whole ethic by which I was brought up. Others matter more than you do, so 'don't fuss, dear; get on with it.'

60. Actually, you have to be a little bit in love with your leading man and vice versa. If you're going to portray love, you have to feel it. You can't do it any other way. But you don't carry it beyond the set.

61. Your heart just breaks, that's all. But you can't judge or point fingers. You just have to be lucky enough to find someone who appreciates you.

62. I hope for better things, and I thank God the world is also full of people who want to be genuine and kind.

63. Fewer things are lovelier to me than a full-blown rose when it opens up its heart.

64. I have to be alone very often. I'd be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That's how I refuel.

65. To be beautiful lips - say kind words. To my eyes were beautiful - radiate good. A woman's beauty is not in the clothes, not in its shape or hairstyle. Beauty woman in her eyes, because the eyes - is the gateway to the heart, where love lives.

66. Nothing is impossible,the word itself says I'm impossible.

67. I think sex is overrated. I don't have sex appeal and I know it. As a matter of fact, I think I'm rather funny looking. My teeth are funny, for one thing, and I have none of the attributes usually required for a movie queen, including the shapeliness.

68. A child is a child in any country, whatever the politics. Let's get down to basics. That's what a child forces you to do. Nothing else much matters, there is no complicated diplomacy, when a child is starving. It's simple. And we'd better do something about it. For our sakes, too. That is, if we want to continue to call ourselves human.