“She lived frugally, but her meals were the only things on which she deliberately spent her money. She never compromised on the quality of her groceries, and drank only good-quality wines.”

“She was not sorry. And if it was the wine telling her that, then she would tell the wine the same thing tomorrow. She was not sorry.”

“She's never where she is,' I said. 'She's only inside her head.”

“Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people's in such a constructive way that she never felt the lack.”

“Audrey had an angelic quality about her. She didn't act like she was better than everyone, she just had a presence, an energy, a sort of light coming from within her that was overwhelming.”

“She had lovers and, if the secret must be out, she drank. What else accounts for the naughtiness of her eyes? Like so many tawaifs (geishas, courtesans) there were ups and downs in her childhood, the father leaving the mother and so on, but she was blessed with the divine gift and her art transcended the various accidents of her life. In the end all else was forgotten. Only the legend and the accomplishment survive.”

“She had lived her early years as though she were waiting for something she might, but never did, become.”

“One young lady asserted that she had never looked at any of the cards in the cars in which she had been riding for years. When questioned further, it appeared that she knew by heart almost every advertisement appearing on the line (Chicago and Evanston line), and that the goods advertised had won her highest esteem. She was not aware of the fact that she had been studying the advertisements, and flatly resented the suggestion that she had been influenced by them. Some of the goods advertised were known to her only by these advertisements, yet she supposed that they had nothing to do with her esteem of the goods. She supposed that she had always known them, that they were used in her home, or that they had been recommended to her. She did not remember when she had first heard of them.”

“She is a dreamer… she lives in her own world. She imagines a lot of things that suit her psyche as an actor. She is a very genuine, warm and a very sensitive person… And no denying the fact a very good learner. It has been an amazing experience to work with her; she is a perfect actress.”

“Garbo is lonely. She always has been and she always will be. She lives in the core of a vast aching aloneness. She is a great artist, but it is both her supreme glory and her supreme tragedy that art is to her the only reality. The figures of living men and women, the events of everyday existence, move about her, shadowy, unsubstantial. It is only when she breathes the breath of life into a part, clothes with her own flesh and blood the concept of a playwright, that she herself is fully awake, fully alive.”