Rita Moreno

Actress

1931-12-11

Quotes by Rita Moreno

• Smell the roses. Smell the coffee. Whatever it is that makes you happy.

  Read quote

• The wonderful thing about cabaret is, you can do a lot of things you can't do in a concert. You can't do smoky ballads for 50 minutes in a concert. It's a different animal.

  Read quote

• I make a lot of soups and stews at home, and I always have fresh bread with it.

  Read quote

• I call myself the hardware shelf. There's a lot of awards and honors there. And I have earned that. I didn't ask for it, I didn't beg for it, I didn't pay for it. I earned that. People see the accomplishments - but it's good to remind people that so much strife and labor and tears and heartbreak came before that, that it really is earned.

  Read quote

• I am able to get up and dust myself off and keep moving forward. I'm very stubborn.

  Read quote

• Actually, my true name is Rosa Dolores Alverio. And then I became Rosita Moreno when a stepfather stepped in. And when I got to MGM studios, which was my first film contract, they just thought that Rosita wasn't a good name, and they changed it to Rita. And yes, it was their idea.

  Read quote

• I just love details; I love trying to make the reader smell what I was smelling at the time and see what I was seeing. Textures, too - all that kind of stuff is probably my strong suit as far as my writing goes, I would say.

  Read quote

• Arrogance - I have very little tolerance for that.

  Read quote

• I've always had this image of this strong, sprightly person who is undaunted by anything; on the contrary, I was one of the shyest, most unsure people you ever met in your life. But I have one very specific quality: I'm plucky. I really am. I would say that's a perfect description of my personality.

  Read quote

• I was born in Puerto Rico - I used to sit in the sun until I looked like a piece of bacon. It's a wonder now that I don't look like an old wallet. I'm a very fortunate person.

  Read quote

• I was a Spanish dancer. I don't mean to put that down, because that was great, too, but nothing like the kind of dancing you had to do in 'West Side Story,' which was called jazz.

  Read quote

• I auditioned for 'West Side Story' just like everybody else, and I nearly had a heart attack, because I hadn't danced in about - oh, I don't know, about 15 years.

  Read quote