The Minnesota-born performer Judy Garland was one of the biggest stars in the first half of the 20th Century. Her performance in the film, The Wizard of Oz, continues to live on today and it will for the next thousand years. Garland, who died young at just 47 years old, was famously multi-talented.
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As such, she lived a life of extremes. Adored by millions, but often sad and depressed. With these highs and lows, Garland had a lot to say about her career, life, crafts, and the world at large outside of her music. These are the best 20 Judy Garland quotes.
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1. “If I am a legend, then why am I so lonely?”
2. “I can live without money, but I cannot live without love.”
3. “We cast away priceless time in dreams, born of imagination, fed upon illusion, and put to death by reality.”
4. “In the silence of night I have often wished for just a few words of love from one man, rather than the applause of thousands of people.”
5. “There have been a lot of stories written about me, some of them fantastically distorted.”
6. “I believe that the real expression of your religious beliefs is shown in the daily pattern of your life, in what you contribute to your surroundings and what you take away without infringing on the rights of other people.”
7. “Hollywood is a strange place if you’re in trouble. Everybody thinks it’s contagious.”
8. “It’s lonely and cold on the top… lonely and cold.”
9. “My father’s death was the most terrible thing that happened to me in my life.”
10. “My mother had a marvelous talent for mishandling money—mine.”
11. “I’m a woman who wants to reach out and take 40 million people in her arms.”
12. “Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.”
13. “I’ve always taken The Wizard of Oz very seriously, you know. I believe in the idea of the rainbow. And I’ve spent my entire life trying to get over it.”
14. “When you get to know a lot of people, you make a great discovery. You find that no one group has a monopoly on looks, brains, goodness or anything else. It takes all the people—black and white, Catholic, Jewish and Protestant, recent immigrants and Mayflower descendants—to make up America.”
15. “I was born at the age of twelve on an MGM lot.”
16. “A really great reception makes me feel like I have a great big warm heating pad all over me. People en masse have always been wonderful to me. I truly have a great love for an audience, and I used to want to prove it to them by giving them blood.”
17. “There have been times when I have deliberately tried to take my life… I think I must have been crying for some attention.”
18. “I’ve never looked through a keyhole without finding someone was looking back.”
19. “From the time I was thirteen, there was a constant struggle between MGM and me—whether or not to eat, how much to eat, what to eat. I remember this more vividly than anything else about my childhood.”
20. “I don’t always have to sing a song. There is something besides ‘The Man That Got Away’ or ‘Over the Rainbow’ or ‘The Trolley Song.’ There’s a woman. There are three children. There’s me! There’s a lot of life going here.”
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