Estelle Getty

Estelle: (about raising her two sons) I can't say I enjoyed it. That was in the days of Dr. Spock. It was a real chore being a mother in those days. It was terrible. Awful. Not fun at all.

Estelle: (on her fellow "Golden Girls") We sure were simpatico! We'd laugh at the same jokes, we had the same feelings about animals and about the world. It was quite remarkable.

Estelle: If you're a beautiful older woman, then you may get work. But if you're a plain older woman, or a fat older woman, or a short older woman, you'll find it harder to get a job.

Estelle: Before [The Golden Girls], every single older person was a mother or a grandmother. Now there are neighbors, secretaries and people who have jobs who are older people. You see roles they've never been allowed in before.

Estelle: I always had to fight against the fact that I could do things even though I was small. And eventually I proved to them I could play mother to six footers.

Estelle: I think they look upon me as an old child, because I'm so little, but they love the fact that I talk back to Dorothy.

Estelle: I've played mothers to heroes and mothers to zeros. I've played Irish mothers, Jewish mothers, Italian mothers, Southern mothers, mothers in plays by Neil Simon and Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. I've played mother to everyone but Attila the Hun.

Estelle: Being tiny has been difficult for me in a business that regarded physicality as the most important part of your life.

Estelle: Too many of you, my friends, are dying. Now it's time for me to do my part and help you.

Estelle: If love means never having to say you're sorry, then marriage means always having to say everything twice.