"Which Esther Williams do you want to hear about?"
"I took a job at the pool in order to earn the five cents a day it cost to swim. I counted wet towels. As a bonus, I was allowed to swim during lunchtime."
"I always felt that if I made a movie, it would be one movie; I didn't see how they could make 26 swimming movies."
"I never walked the streets of New York hoping to be a musical comedy star. For one thing, they would have thought I was too tall, because l was five feet eight and a half, and they were all little bitty things running around in the studio at that time."
"I remember when I first walked into Mayer's cavernous office. You had to walk 50 yards to get to him, and in that time he could really study everything about you."
"Critics established a snobbery toward me."
"I was the only swimmer in movies. Tarzan was long gone, and he couldn't have done them anyway; he could never have gotten into my bathing suit."
"I gave my eardrums to MGM. And it's true: I really did."
"I was 15, and the years of hard swimming had packed muscle on my frame and made me very strong. Not as strong as a football player, but strong enough to inflict heavy damage."
"It appeared as if I had invited the audience into the water with me, and it conveyed the sensation that being in there was absolutely delicious."
"I think it's so funny when people think they can't control a movie star. They can. We're just women, you know."
"Widowhood had done nothing to curb my smart mouth. So much for diplomacy."
"When you're out of sight for as long as I was, there's a funny feeling of betrayal that comes over people when they see you again."
"Once I married Fernando, I became invisible."
"What the public expects and what is healthy for an individual are two very different things."
"I always took it for granted that there would be life after Hollywood."
"The wisdom acquired with the passage of time is a useless gift unless you share it."
"Somehow I kept my head above water. I relied on the discipline, character, and strength that I had started to develop as that little girl in her first swimming pool."
"We can't all win Olympic medals. Even I never won one."
"Traveling to swimming meets took me beyond my small-town existence, gave me a hint of the exciting world outside of my own home."
"Everything about my teenage life was almost ideal."
"Three events. Three gold medals. I was news, big news, in the sports world."
"The newspapers loved pinup pictures of pretty young swimmers, and as a national champion, I got more than my share of space in the sports pages."
"Life magazine ran a page featuring me and three other girls that was clearly the precursor of Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues."
"I took my daily swim at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool despite the presence of onlookers."
