Sourced

• I was at a point where I was ready to say I am what I am because of what I am and if you like me I'm grateful, and if you don't, what am I going to do about it?
  • Interview on her role in the Broadway play "Two for the Seesaw". The New York Times (1958)

• There are always good parts. They may not pay what you want, and they may not have as many days' work as you want, they may not have the billing that you want, they may not have a lot of things, but—the content of the role itself—I find there are many roles.
  • Associated Press interview (1997)

• If there are, let's say, 20 astronauts, there may be two women among those 20 astronauts. If there are 20 FBI guys, there's one woman and the rest are men. So when somebody writes a script about life, usually the leading role will be the man, because mostly what women do is at home taking care of the children...That's the most important job there is on Earth. And why shouldn't women have it since they are the better of the two sexes?
  • Associated Press interview (1997)

• I don't quite jump for joy, but I am awfully glad to see him.
  • On her husband Mel Brooks Associated Press interview (1997)

• First of all, you have to marry the right person. If you marry the wrong person for the wrong reasons, then no matter how hard you work, it's never going to work, because then you have to completely change yourself, completely change them, completely— by that time, you're both dead. So I think you have to marry for the right reasons, and marry the right person.
  • On successful marriage. Associated Press interview (1997)

• He understands not only with his brain but with his heart. And that might be called love. Not quite sure, but maybe that's the key.
  • On her husband Mel Brooks Associated Press interview (1997)

• I identified with both women. But Emma had a stronger message for the women I want to speak to now— women who work. I wanted to tell them that choosing to work doesn't make them oddballs and isn't antisocial.
  • On her decision to play Emma, in The Turning Point (1977). Interview People magazine, quoted in "Anne Bancroft" at Salon.com (18 September 2001)

• I am quite surprised, that with all my work, and some of it is very, very good, that nobody talks about The Miracle Worker. We're talking about Mrs. Robinson. I understand the world... I'm just a little dismayed that people aren't beyond it yet.
  • Interview (2003)

• To this day, when men meet me, there's always that movie in the back of their mind.
  • Remark to Peter Marks in 2002, quoted in Washington Post (8 June 2005)

Unsourced

• Life is here only to be lived so that we can, through life, earn the right to death, which to me is paradise. Whatever it is that will bring me the reward of paradise, I'll do the best I can.

• The best way to get most husbands to do something is to suggest that perhaps they're too old to do it.

• The studios wanted to give me the Monroe-type sex buildup. I wanted to develop my acting, not my body.

• When Mel told his Jewish mother he was marrying an Italian girl, she said: "Bring her over. I'll be in the kitchen— with my head in the oven".

Quotes of others about Bancroft

• What I learned from her, really, was having a sense of humour and knowing how important laughter was. ~ Patty Duke

• She was one of the most alive people I ever met—such exuberance—and she had this laugh in her that filled her from head to toe. ~ Dustin Hoffman

• More happens in her face in 10 seconds than happens in most women's faces in 10 years. ~ Arthur Penn

• You don't marry Mel Brooks, if you don't have a sense of humor. ~ Arthur Penn