Top 88 Joan Quotes

I think there have always been funny women, from Carol Burnett to Joan Rivers. When the audience sees a woman, they innately know she’s worked twice as hard to get there, she’s had to prove that she can be the leader, first, and then be funny on top of it. She has to emit a confidence that she’s in control.

I think that people are definitely interested in the idea that Joan has conversations with God.

2009 was crazy enough! I can’t believe I worked with Jeremy Irons, Joan Allen, Marsha Mason, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury, Jack O’Brien and Trevor Nunn in the same 12 months.

I love Joan Didion, but I love her writing. I don’t think meeting her could solve my problems or make me understand the world better.

‘Good Morning America’ exploited Joan Lunden’s pregnancy, but you won’t see me bringing my babies on the air. The only reason I’m talking about the babies at all is that they’ve been with me on the show since I became pregnant. After a while, I had to acknowledge this pumpkin tummy.

It is extremely chilling that Donald Trump views the spectacle of choosing cabinet appointments in a way that is similar to deciding whether or not to fire Lil Jon or Joan Rivers.

I’m not trying to be the next Joan Rivers.

I used to play Joan Jett all the time. Then, the movie ‘The Runaways’ came out. It was a wrap from there.

I have always identified with Joan Didion’s depiction of Los Angeles and Southern California, ever since reading ‘Play It As It Lays,’ ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’ and ‘The White Album.’

Judy Garland, Doris Day, and Gene Kelly were all big influences growing up from all of the films. I’m also a huge folk music fan – Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan have influenced a lot of how music can inspire change in our world.

All my games were political games; I was, like Joan of Arc, perpetually being burned at the stake.

When they make a woman’s picture, they treat it like a ‘woman’s picture.’ In the ’40s, they didn’t treat Joan Crawford movies like that, but as the big movies of their year. I’m upset that there’s no ‘Terminator’ with a woman in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s role. Because that would make just as much money.

My literary heroes were mostly women writers and thinkers – Joy Williams, Joan Didion, Anne Sexton, June Jordan, Sarah Schulman, Audre Lorde, Cherrie Moraga, Christa Wolf – and much of this writing was political as well as literary.

Joan Crawford is a movie queen. I had never met one before. I know now what I don’t want to be.

The first time I performed onstage was at church. Then I formed a rock cover band – Pink Floyd and Joan Jett. We’d play at birthday parties, since it wasn’t exactly church material.

In a way, all Scandinavian movies are descendants of the original Scandinavian Christian-metaphor movie, Danish director Carl Dreyer’s 1928 ‘The Passion of Joan of Arc,’ one of the seven or eight best films ever made and impossible to watch more than once.

Joan was one of my biggest fans, as was Chrissie Hynde.

‘Goldenheart’ is like a modern-day Joan of Arc. Think of it like medieval times-cum-2045 or Lancelot and Guinevere in 3025. It’s a new version of these battles – age-old stories for the now.

Joan of Arc was born 600 years ago. Six centuries is a long time to continue to mark the birth of a girl who, according to her family and friends, knew little more than spinning and watching over her father’s flocks.

Let’s face it I am not Joan Collins or Boy George.

A Joan Crawford dress looks really good on an hourglass figure.

Imagine a singer with the virtuosity of Joan Sutherland or Ella Fitzgerald, the public persona of Eleanor Roosevelt, and the audience of Elvis, and you have Umm Kulthum.

If I could work with Joan Van Ark every day for the rest of my life I would.

I grew up listening in awe to stories of their wartime adventures. My granny, Joan, was a journalist and wrote amazing letters to my grandpa when he was a prisoner of war, while my nana, Mary, was a Land Girl, then a Wren. They were so independent, resilient and glamorous.

Surgery is not going to improve your skin – all it’s going to do is make you look tighter, like Joan Rivers!

I have nothing snarky to say about Joan Rivers’ appearance. We should all be that happy with how we look on camera, frankly.

I adore the incredibly tight clothing! My own wardobe’s changed – I’ve streamlined a little bit and definitely learnt from Joan’s sleekiness and tailoring.

‘I Love Lucy,’ the first classic, really belonged more to the Wacky Woman genre than the domestic sitcom; ‘My Little Margie’ and ‘I Married Joan’ were among the shrill, coarse imitations.

I would say I grew up listening a lot to Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland and Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell. I grew up listening to those because my parents were kind of into folk music.

You see a Donald Trump on TV, just like you’d see Joan Rivers on TV when she was living, and you see a real person. That’s the Donald Trump that I know.

I want to be the Joan of Arc of fashion. I want to be the link between the runway and the real woman.

My husband says, ‘What Joan walk? You’ve always walked that way!’

When Joan Rivers walked through the curtain on ‘The Tonight Show,’ nobody in my house was allowed to utter a sound. Her gait was full of pep and purpose and her voice unmatched.

My family life reads a bit like ‘Little House on the Prairie.’ I was big sister to Joan, Renee, and brother William, and we grew up in Dalkey, a little town 10 miles outside of Dublin. It was a secure, safe and happy childhood, which was meant to be a disadvantage when it comes to writing stories about family dramas.

I, Joan Crawford, I believe in the dollar. Everything I earn, I spend.

I love Joan Collins. She’s a wonderful lady. She has such courage. She’s such a good actress.

To the unwashed public, Joan Collins is a star. But to those who know her, she’s a commodity who would sell her own bowel movement.

Pavarotti’s is the best male voice, and Joan Sutherland had a big voice but also acquired great coloratura notes.

Some people admire the aspirational rock star figures whose biopics make it to TV, the people they watched as kids and made them want to play football for England. For some comics, it is often the Doug Stanhopes and the Joan Rivers.

I gave up the notion of writing the life of Joan of Arc, as I found that there was absolutely no new material to be gleaned on her history – in fact, she had been thrashed out.

I met Joan Allen at an L.A. Film Critics Awards’ dinner, and I said, ‘I want to write a movie for you.’

The least likely of military leaders, Joan of Arc changed the course of the Hundred Years’ War and of history.

I like Joan Jett’s ‘I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll’ because it’s got a nice low singing voice.

I had achieved the most important things in my life when I married Joan and had the sons. Given the choice between Joan and the boys, and being a writer, I world give up being a writer without a blink.

I like insult comics. Joan Rivers, Dame Edna, people like that.

I’d love to play St. Joan or Hamlet, and hopefully I will.

We’re just four girls with attitude, aren’t we? It just happened naturally. And with songs like ‘Joan of Arc,’ they needed that rap-y take on it. ‘Wasabi’ has that clap-back-to-the-haters vibe.

I was married to Margaret Joan Howe in 1940. Although not a scientist herself she has contributed more to my work than anyone else by providing a peaceful and happy home.

I’ll never have so compelling a figure within my embrace as Joan of Arc; there will never be a book whose last chapter is so very hard to get right.

To be playing Joan Crawford is as good as it gets.

Many years ago, I had the pleasure of editing a book by Joan Crawford, who, like Norma Desmond, was still a big star; it was just the movies that had gotten smaller.

There are certain historical figures of such importance that we need to know everything about them, which is why books about Napoleon, Lincoln, Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth I, and the great religious founders continue to proliferate; these lives require constant reevaluation and interpretation.

When my sister Joan arrived, I asked if I could swap her for a rabbit. When I think what a marvellous friend she’s been, I’m so glad my parents didn’t take me at my word.

I tried not to make God this big deal in Joan’s life. She treats God like a friend: she’s nice to him some days, and other days mean, and then cries when she needs help.

I think Joan’s advice would be: always know more than anyone else, always be discreet as possible. And never cry at work.

As far as female vocalists, I love Heart, Joan Jett, Courtney Love, Laura Branigan, Linda Ronstadt, Barbra Streisand – or going back to when I was a child, Aileen Quinn, the original Annie.

A young female essayist saying they’re influenced by Joan Didion is like a young female singer-songwriter saying they’re influenced by Joni Mitchell.

I… was not too happy to suddenly take on this public role thrust upon me. They just assumed I was the Joan of Arc of the women’s movement. And I wasn’t at all. It put a lot of unnecessary pressure on me.

I think we have responsibilities to be active in the things we believe in, regardless of what our job is. At least in my lifetime, there has been a tremendous combining of activism and music, that came up in the era of Pete Seeger and the Weavers and Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and Peter Paul & Mary.

I have women coming up to me and saying: ‘I love your character! She’s so empowered. She takes control; she gets what she wants.’ That’s another side of her. And I respect that in Joan. She says and does things that I would never allow myself to do.

Show me one guy or woman as funny as Rodney Dangerfield or as good as George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, or Joan Rivers. There are a lot of good comics out there, no doubt, but as far as the quality of the comics goes, I think what you have is a bunch of situational comics.

I’d love to have played Joan of Arc. That would have been amazing.

The real fans do not just admire the star of their choice, they identify with him or her, while the star, unlike Joan Crawford, comes to need the fans’ love, admiration, and constant interest.

My name at birth was Carol Joan Klein. It would take me five decades to appreciate my surname and the history that came with it. Along the way, I would add an ‘e’ to Carol and acquire several more surnames.

I mean, I would love to have the career Joan Baez is having in Europe right now, but God knows I don’t begrudge her that career.

I read ‘Mommie Dearest,’ and while I am not comparing myself to Joan Crawford, I will never uproot my child. I won’t make my daughter move. I’d rather not work than do that.

Joan Rivers telling Lauren Bacall her dress is all wrong is like Carrot Top telling Lenny Bruce he needs to get an edge.

If you’ve earned a position, be proud of it. Don’t hide it. I want to be recognized. When I hear people say, ‘There’s Joan Crawford!’ I turn around and say, ‘Hi! How are you!’

My mum loved Joan Armatrading and used to play her records all the time and even took me to see her a couple of times when I was really quite young. I didn’t really like her music back then because my mum was always playing it, but I’ve grown to appreciate it more.

I mean, I’m from the Joan Rivers, Don Rickles kind of old-school comedy in that nothing is off the table, certainly not in politics. So, I think if you can find something to laugh at, that’s got people kind of on edge, or, you know, stressed out, I think you gotta go for it.

That said, let me add that Joan and I never want him to be a child actor. We both feel that it takes away their childhood and puts untold pressure on children.

You can’t take up all the music bins at a CD retail outlet with Spice Girls CDs and leave nothing for the Joan Jett catalogue.

The Joan Crawford that I’ve heard about in ‘Mommie Dearest’ is not the Joan Crawford I knew back when.

Joan Collins was the best. She really could sort of pull it off, be really outrageous and never even flinch.

Only towards the end of this process are any of the chapters in fully readable condition, a state of affairs that used to alarm my wife. But Joan’s got used to it.

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That’s what Norman Mailer did. That’s what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that’s what I do – that’s what I mean to do.

I think that the work that Bette Davis and Joan Crawford did was truly extraordinary, and that’s their legacy. Not the other petty stuff.

I saw myself as Joan of Arc.

When I’m working, I try to be serious and rest where I can. I just mark in rehearsals. I still train. I warm up. And I still take lessons from this unbelievable teacher in New York, Joan Lader. I try to be stretched and ready to go.

I met Joan Jett and Kim Fowley in a club, and all of a sudden this amazing offer comes to me. I’m thinking ‘This is all I want to do.’ I jumped at the chance.

I’m no Joan of Arc, but it’s pretty revolutionary having a gender illusionist selling the illusion of beauty to females.

When you watch television shows, as good as they are, like ‘Joan of Arcadia’ and ‘Touched by an Angel,’ everything is this kind of mishmash of faith but not any specific religion.

I worked with so many comedians who became big names – so many, I can’t even remember some of their names. John Byner, Totie Fields, Joan Rivers. Shecky Green at the MGM. When I started my career, my first hotel in Las Vegas was at the old Flamingo. My opening act was Bill Cosby.

As a human being, Joan Crawford is a great actress.

I’ve been watching a lot of Joan Didion interviews on YouTube. I love her. My drummer has gotten me into looking at Terence McKenna interviews.

Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.

Joan Rivers was a role model to comics everywhere, but especially to women. She got the first laugh and the last laugh.

My mother loved films! She adored Ingrid Bergman, Joan Fontaine, Vivien Leigh. We couldn’t afford to go together to the cinema, but she was always watching their movies on TV.