Top 38 Gypsy Rose Quotes

#1. Men aren't attracted to me by my mind. They're attracted by what I don't mind.

Gypsy Rose Lee

#2. Gypsy [Rose Lee], who was called Louise as a kid, gave her first performances here with her sister [June Hovac], playing for the local Masonic lodge halls. It was a tight-knit community, and the support and success the act enjoyed here enabled them to hit the road and make it in big-time vaudeville.

Karen Abbott

#3. I think Gypsy [Rose Lee] would be appalled at today's rawer, more blatant displays of the female form. She was, in her own way, a prude.

Karen Abbott

#4. I felt differently about her [Gypsy Rose Lee] during every phase of the research and writing process. Often, I felt incredibly sorry for her; she had an extremely difficult childhood and a complicated 'to say the least' relationship with her family, her mother especially.

Karen Abbott

#5. Gypsy [Rose Lee] is as unique as she is timeless. Her story is classic Americana, and the strangest rags-to-riches saga you'll ever read; I like to call it Horatio Alger meets Tim Burton.

Karen Abbott

#6. God will protect us, but to make sure, carry a heavy club.

Gypsy Rose Lee

#7. When Gypsy was older, after she became Gypsy Rose Lee, I think she was both proud and slightly ashamed of her Seattle roots. She worked very hard to rid her voice of any trace of a local accent, cultivating an affected way of speaking that sounded as if she pinned the ends of her words.

Karen Abbott

#8. Praying is like a rocking chair - it'll give you something to do, but it won't get you anywhere.

Gypsy Rose Lee

#9. This is your karma. You do not understand now, but you will understand later. The source of pain is within your own larger expression of being.

H. Raven Rose

#10. I wasn't naked, I was completely covered by a blue spotlight.

Gypsy Rose Lee

#11. I don't consider 'American Rose' to be a biography so much as a microcosm of 20th-century America, told through Gypsy's tumultuous life - it's 'Horatio Alger meets Tim Burton.'

Karen Abbott

#12. I have everything I had 20 years ago, only it's all a little lower.

Gypsy Rose Lee

#13. Gypsy [Rose Lee] wasn't a linear person, and she didn't live life in a linear fashion. She was relentlessly self-inventing, and moved backward as often as she moved forward.

Karen Abbott

#14. I came upon a telegram from Eleanor Roosevelt herself to Gypsy Rose Lee that read, 'May your bare ass always be shining'. That was the clincher; I had to write about this woman.

Karen Abbott

#15. I greatly admired Gypsy [Rose Lee] for being able to rise above her circumstances; I was terrified of her; I thought she was generous; I thought she was brilliant; I thought she was cruel.

Karen Abbott

#16. Anything worth doing well is worth doing slowly ...

Gypsy Rose Lee

#17. She is descended from a long line that her mother listened to.

Gypsy Rose Lee

#18. I'm probably the highest paid outdoor entertainer since Cleopatra,

Gypsy Rose Lee

#19. One of the biggest questions to me was whether or not Gypsy the person was capable of loving anyone or anything beyond Gypsy Rose Lee the creation, and even that was a conflicted, tortured relationship.

Karen Abbott

#20. She's descended from a long line her mother listened to.

Gypsy Rose Lee

#21. Burlesque thrived during the Great Depression, and by extension, so, too, did Gypsy [Rose Lee]. Men could no longer afford to pay $5.50 to see a show on Broadway, but they could scrape together $1.00 for a matinee at a burlesque house.

Karen Abbott

#22. She [Gypsy Rose Lee] was a sophisticated self-satirist with a contagious delight in the comedy of sex. She was coy; she was sly; she always had a witty quip; she had an intensely dramatic presence.

Karen Abbott

#23. This is my present, you know. My present from Mother.

Gypsy Rose Lee

#24. I've got everything I had 20 years ago, except now it's all lower.

Gypsy Rose Lee

#25. A naked dog for a naked lady.

Gypsy Rose Lee

#26. I have everything I had twenty years ago, only it's all a little bit lower.

Gypsy Rose Lee

#27. A half-century before Madonna, Gypsy [Rose Lee] understood how to make performance out of desire, how to exploit the very human and eternal instinct to always want most what we'll never have.

Karen Abbott

#28. The dog is dressed just like me at the climax of my act.

Gypsy Rose Lee

#29. In Gypsy [Rose Lee] the musical, her mother, 'Mama Rose', is portrayed as a slightly eccentric, pushy, ambitious stage mother, but that version doesn't come close to the truth.

Karen Abbott

#30. I wrote it three times - with a Thesaurus.

Gypsy Rose Lee

#31. Gypsy [Rose Lee ] was a masterful storyteller, and her memoir and by extension, the musical weren't only Gypsy's monument; they were also her chance for monumental revisionism.

Karen Abbott

#32. One of my favorite people is Gypsy Rose Lee. She bears out the Biblical promise that he who has, gets. And I hope she gets a lot more.

Hedy Lamarr

#33. I used to come home at night full of inspiration, and sit up with a bottle of Scotch. As I wrote, the words seemed wonderful, just too wonderful to be coming from me. Next morning I always found they were terrible and I could never use anything I wrote.

Gypsy Rose Lee

#34. When I tried to do something else, everyone behaved as if I was Gypsy Rose Lee trying to paint a Matisse.

Zoe Heller

#35. If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing slowly ... very slowly.

Gypsy Rose Lee

#36. God is love, but get it in writing.

Gypsy Rose Lee

#37. If Lady Gaga and Dorothy Parker had a secret love child, it would've been Gypsy Rose Lee. Gypsy arrived for opening nights at the Met wearing a full-length cape made entirely of orchids, while Lady Gaga shows up wearing a full-length cloak made of meat.

Karen Abbott

#38. You don't have to be naked to look naked. You just have to think naked.

Gypsy Rose Lee

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