On acting: "Come to work on time, know your lines and don't bump into the other actors." On drinking: "Hell, I used to take two-week lunch hours!" "I couldn't be a director because I couldn't put up with the actors. I don't have the patience. Why, I'd probably kill the actors. Not to mention some of the beautiful actresses." "Whenever I'm asked what my definition of a professional is in our business, I tell 'em to go talk to Spence." -- Clark Gable "What do we need another galoot for? We've already got Wallace Beery." -- Louis B. Mayer, upon finding out that Irving Thalberg had hired Tracy to join MGM On being asked why he was always billed above Katharine Hepburn in their films together, when politeness dictated the other way around: "Because this is a movie, you chowderhead, not a lifeboat!" "Spencer Tracy, you're the best damn actor there is!" -- George M. Cohan "The kids keep telling me I should try this new "Method Acting" but I'm too old, I'm too tired and I'm too talented to care." On why he never left his wife for Katherine Hepburn: "I can get a divorce whenever I want to. But my wife and Kate like things just as they are." "This mug of mine is as plain as a barn door. Why should people pay thirty-five cents to look at it?" "I'm disappointed in acting as a craft. I want everything to go back to Orson Welles and fake noses and changing your voice. It's become so much about personality." "It is up to us to give ourselves recognition. If we wait for it to come from others, we feel resentful when it doesn't, and when it does, we may well reject it." "Even when my throat is completely tired out from acting, Luckies still get along with it fine." "There were times when my pants were so thin, I could sit on a dime and know if it was heads or tails." "The physical labor actors have to do wouldn't tax an embryo." "Write anything you want about me. Make up something. Hell, I don't care."