Shirley MacLaine Quotes

Well, here's my feeling about shtick. I think sometimes if you don't have it going on too much, you're probably feeling insecure and then you want to add on the shtick. I would say, oh, like Kiss. You try to stand out from the crowd, you're going for a bold statement, you're going for a high concept.

The theatre is a gross art, built in sweeps and over-emphasis. Compromise is its second name.

Italians have no sense of the dramatic.

I live in a constant state of hyperbole.

Never a man to understate matters

You must not believe your own PR; it would be grotesque.

Anything I do is as theatrical as I can get it.

affectation is fond of making a greater show than reality. ... Nature and truth have never learned to blow the trumpet, and never will.

What some people would call antics, I would just call a good show.

There's a tendency for designers to embellish the size of their business. I never lie.

Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood and nearly as blamable.

More often than not, whenever gossip has been written about me, the gossip is more interesting than the reality. I know some public figures hate gossip, but personally I like it because it makes my life sound more glamorous and interesting than it really is.

Honestly, my dating life according to the tabloids is very exciting, and the most hilarious thing is that it's nowhere near as exciting as the tabloids have ever made it out to be.

Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.

I just don't like the whole Hollywood thing.

In Hollywood, a lot of acting feels like grandstanding.

I was reading so much about myself in the papers that was not me.

Most people, it seems, stretch the truth to make themselves seem more impressive. I, it seems, stretch the truth to make myself look worse.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

I love being an entertainer - not really fond of being a celebrity.

I really have a distaste for poets who announce themselves at 50 yards; you know, here he comes, you know, with the beret and the cane and the cape and the whatever - whatever mishegas is part of the outfit there.

I don't go on that many dates, because the truth is, anytime you go out in public with a girl when you're well-known, there are pictures of you everywhere, and it's like you're a thing.

Modesty is a virtue that can never thrive in public …. A man must be his own trumpeter—he must write or dictate paragraphs of praise in the newspapers; he must dress, have a retinue and equipage; he must ostentatiously publish to the world his own writings with his name, make the mob stare and gape, and perpetuate his fame.

Reality bears no relationship to the super-heated rhetoric.

The only kind of statement worth making is an overstatement.