"The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own."

"The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning [that is, a longing] that women suffered in the middle of the 20th century in the United States. Each suburban [house]wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries ... she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question - 'Is this all?"

"You can have it all, just not all at the same time."

"Life lived only for oneself does not truly satisfy men or women. There is a hunger in Americans today for larger purposes beyond the self. That is the reason for the religious revival and the new resonance of 'family."

"It is perhaps beside the point to remark that bowling alleys and supermarkets have nursery facilities, while schools and colleges and scientific laboratories and government offices do not."

"The feminists had destroyed the old image of woman, but they could not erase the hostility, the prejudice, the discrimination that still remained."

"Man is not the enemy here, but the fellow victim. The real enemy is women's denigration of themselves."

"Who knows what women can be when they are finally free to become themselves? Who knows what women's intelligence will contribute when it can be nourished without denying love?"

"The feminist revolution had to be fought because women quite simply were stopped at a state of evolution far short of their human capacity."

"It is wrong to keep spelling out unnecessary choices that make women unconsciously resist either commitment or motherhood--and that hold back recognition of the needed social changes."

"Who knows what women can be when they are finally free to be themselves."

"Men weren't really the enemy - they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill."

"The insult, the real reflection on our culture's definition of the role of women, is that as a nation we only noticed something was wrong with women when we saw its effects on their sons."

"Why do people say "grow some balls"? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding."

"Animals don’t lie. Animals don’t criticize. If animals have moody days, they handle them better than humans do."

"If one has no sense of humor, one is in trouble."

"I'm a big cockeyed optimist. I try to accentuate the positive as opposed to the negative."

"I think older women still have a full life."

"Animal lover that I am, a cougar I am not."

"I've enjoyed the opposite sex a lot. Always have. Always will."

"I always wanted to be a zookeeper when I was growing up, and I've wound up a zookeeper! I've been working with the Los Angeles Zoo for 45 years! I'm the luckiest old broad on two feet because my life is divided absolutely in half - half animals and half show business. You can't ask for better than two things you love the most."

"I didn't know what Facebook was, and now that I do know what it is, I have to say, it sounds like a huge waste of time."

"Hot dogs and Red Vines and potato chips and French fries are my favorite foods."

"If you're walking with your lady on the sidewalk, I still like to see a man walking street-side, to protect the lady from traffic. I grew up with that, and I hate to see something like that get lost. I still like to see that a man opens the door. I like those touches of chivalry that are fast disappearing."

"It's your outlook on life that counts. If you take yourself lightly and don't take yourself too seriously, pretty soon you can find the humor in our everyday lives. And sometimes it can be a lifesaver."

"Don't try to be young. Just open your mind. Stay interested in stuff. There are so many things I won't live long enough to find out about, but I'm still curious about them. You know people who are already saying, 'I'm going to be 30 - oh, what am I going to do?' Well, use that decade! Use them all!"

"Animals are near and dear to my heart, and I've devoted my life to trying to improve their lives."

"When I pontificate, it sounds so, you know, Oh, well, she's preaching. I'm not preaching, but I think maybe I learned it from my animal friends. Kindness and consideration of somebody besides yourself. I think that keeps you feeling young. I really do."

"During the Depression, my dad made radios to sell to make extra money. Nobody had any money to buy the radios, so he would trade them for dogs. He built kennels in the backyard, and he cared for the dogs."

"I'm not into animal rights. I'm only into animal welfare and health. I've been with the Morris Animal Foundation since the '70s. We're a health organization. We fund campaign health studies for dogs, cats, lizards and wildlife. I've worked with the L.A. Zoo for about the same length of time. I get my animal fixes!"

"Anger tears me up inside... My own... or anyone else's."

"Doing drama is, in a sense, easier. In doing comedy, if you don't get that laugh, there's something wrong."

"I go out to the kitchen to feed the dog, but that's about as much cooking as I do."

"I've worked with the Los Angeles Zoo for 45 years, and we have this magnificent photographer, Tad Motoyama. He takes these wonderful, wonderful animal pictures. All through the years he's given me copies of these pictures. Well, I have all these gorgeous ones, so I said, 'Tad, I want to do a book with your picture on one side.'"

"I may be a senior, but so what? I'm still hot."

"I have a two-story house and a bad memory, so I'm up and down those stairs all the time. That's my exercise."

"I'm a teenager trapped in an old body."

"The bottom line is, I'm blessed with good health. On top of that, I don't go around thinking 'Oh, I'm 90, I better do this or I better do that.' I'm just Betty. I'm the same Betty that I've always been. Take it or leave it."

"I don't seem to require a lot of sleep. I just - if I get four, five good hours, I'm fine. But sleeping is sort of dull. There's a lot of other good stuff that you can do without just lying down and closing your eyes."

"A lot of people think this is a goodie two-shoes talking. But we do have a tendency to complain rather than celebrating who we are. I learned at my mother's knee it's better to appreciate what's happening... I think we kind of talk ourselves into the negative sometimes."

"My mother and dad were big animal lovers, too. I just don't know how I would have lived without animals around me. I'm fascinated by them - both domestic pets and the wild community. They just are the most interesting things in the world to me, and it's made such a difference in my lifetime."

"You can always tell about somebody by the way they put their hands on an animal."

"I'm in the middle of my sixth book, which is about animals at the Los Angeles Zoo."

"I enjoy being busy, I really do. Remember, I'm the stub end of the railroad. I have no family, so I'm not taking busy time away from people that I should be spending it with. So I'm just relaxing and enjoying it."

"Wilderness is harder and harder to find these days on this beautiful planet, and we're abusing our planet to the point of almost no return."

"I had to make a major decision with myself because I just don't think you can do both: try to have a baby career and raise it and have a baby baby and raise it. And to try to do justice to either one. It was a very conscious decision on my part not to have children - which I have never regretted."

"People have told me 'Betty, Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with old friends...' .. At my age, if I wanted to keep in touch with old friends, I'd need a Ouija board"

"I don't care who anybody sleeps with. If a couple has been together all that time - and there are gay relationships that are more solid than some heterosexual ones - I think it's fine if they want to get married. I don't know how people can get so anti-something."

"Retirement is not in my vocabulary. They aren't going to get rid of me that way."

"I love words. Sudoku I don't get into, I'm not into numbers that much, and there are people who are hooked on that. But crossword puzzles, I just can't - if I get a puppy and I paper train him and I put the - if all of a sudden I'd open the paper and there's a crossword puzzle - 'No, no, you can't go on that, honey. I'll take it.'"