I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.
Any star can be devoured by human adoration, sparkle by sparkle.
Biographies of me have usually been compiled from old newspaper clips, untruthful publicity stories, and reminiscences of people who claim to have known me well.
I've always been bossy.
I did an imitation of him to make the crew laugh. To my shock, there was Cary Grant behind me. He got very angry. I was sent all the way from RKO to David Selznick's office and was told not to do it anymore. I thought to myself, 'I must have been pretty good to make him that angry.'
Nothing crushes freedom as substantially as a tank.
I was in Vienna in August 1968 for a meeting of the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies, of which I was co-founder, and we wanted a 20th country to join. They asked for a volunteer to go to Prague to get Czechoslovakia to do it, and my hand always goes up first.
I've been blessed with three wonderful careers: motion pictures and television, wife, mother and grandmother... and diplomatic services for the United States government.
Make-believe colors the past with innocent distortion, and it swirls ahead of us in a thousand ways in science, in politics, in every bold intention.
Men say, 'I've loved you since I was 7 years old,' and I say, 'Well, you never contacted me.' And very often women say, 'Do youuuuuu know what I have?' and I want to say, 'Yessssssss, I do.' Because inevitably the answer is, 'An original Shirley Temple doll.'
My role models were Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt, and my major crush was J. Edgar Hoover.
I work a seventeen hour day, and I'm personally responsible for 108 staff members in the embassy.
Most of the people in Ghana wouldn't know me as an actress. They'd know me for my work at the U.N.
I'm not too proud of the movies I made as a grownup except for 'That Hagen Girl', which nobody remembers but which gave me a chance to act.
I've led three lives: the acting part, wife and mother - which is a career - and international relations. I'm proud of my career, the first one, and I'm proud of the other two, too.
Dr. Kissinger was a former child. Jerry Ford was a former child. Even F.D.R. was a former child. I retired from the movies in 1949, and I'm still a former child.
When you're a performer, you have to please a large audience. And when you're in politics, you have to please a large audience, too.
Politicians are actors, too, don't you think? Usually, if you like people and you're outgoing, not a shy little thing, you can do pretty well in politics.
Long ago, I became more interested in the real world than in make-believe.
By the time I got to the Fox studio for my first major film, I knew how to hit a mark. I knew how to memorize lines. I knew how to pay attention.
