There aren't any hard women, only soft men.
I was a bigger-than-life persona before I was anyone in my own mind.
My body is the shape I live in and it shapes the way I live.
the brain, the mind, and all the things that happen inside it, it's a very erogenous zone.
As far as I've been alive, women have always been more or less the symbol of sexuality rather than the male. We don't see the naked male body, as the symbol of sex.
I'm a hard worker, very driven, and have never expected anything to come easily. My yoga, a great rejuvenator, helped me to live down my image - this sex symbol thing. It helps me connect with myself.
Change excites me. I am fifty years old. It's when the mind catches up with the body.
We try to do too many things that used to be in the men's domain, and we try to do them like men's. I'm a prude - I guess you can tell that - but I think, 'Why would you do that?'
I am 5 ft 6 in, and at my peak, my vital statistics were 37-22-35. I didn't even think about my weight - but now I work hard at keeping healthy. Fortunately, my husband Richie is as much of a fitness buff as I am.
I've always been a health fanatic.
I couldn't stand that my husband was being unfaithful. I am Raquel Welch - understand?
There's a duality in every man and every woman.
The whole sex-symbol thing is part of what I do as an actress. It's a kind of character I play. It's part of me, but not the whole me.
I was not a classic mother. But my kids were never palmed off to boarding school. So, I didn't bake cookies. You can buy cookies, but you can't buy love.
Once you get rid of the idea that you must please other people before you please yourself, and you begin to follow your own instincts - only then can you be successful. You become more satisfied, and when you are, other people will tend to be satisfied by what you do.
I have a very, very good life. I'm grateful for all of my friends, my family and the life that I have, and the possibilities in my future.
You can't fake listening. It shows.
I think it'd be wonderful if we could train young girls to be active in lots of ways and that they then wouldn't have to age at the same rate that they would if they were not more active. In other words, more physical fitness and not just the sporty kind, but the yoga, which is really important.
Being a sex symbol was rather like being a convict.
Latinos are here to stay. As citizen Raquel, I'm proud to be Latina.
The mind can also be an erogenous zone.
We all have a childhood dream that when there is love, everything goes like silk, but the reality is that marriage requires a lot of compromise.
I'm not imperceptible to masculine charm, but, well, you know, I can flirt.
Turning 60 was not a happy time. I didn't think 'I'm falling apart,' but I did re-examine my priorities.
I'd taken the bull by the horns by liberating myself and creating a career. It took guts - it was scary and chancy - but they discounted me as empty-headed: some little piece of fluff without any brain that happened to come along.
Without women to nurture in this world, how do - how do men get by? How do children get by? How does society get by at all?
I take a multivitamin, I take extra C, I take chondroitin and glucosamine for my joints, I take calcium for my bones. And by the way, weight-bearing exercises can help ward off osteoporosis and yoga helps ward off arthritis.
I find clothes so constricting!
My father was Bolivian, which makes me half-Bolivian. It's where I got some of my exotic features and certainly my skin tone.
When I first came along in the business, they didn't really like the idea of my name being Raquel.
I knew my mother was - well, her ancestry dated back to John Quincy Adams, so she was totally not Latina. She was definitely whatever you call it - white bread, shall we say?
It seemed like a wonderful honor to have the Film Society of Lincoln Center screen 'The Films of Raquel Welch.' It shows a lot of a variety in what they've chosen; it kind of runs the gamut of my film career.
'My self-esteem,' 'my self-this,' 'my self-that.' Believe me, I've been there - I'm an actress. At one point, you just get nauseous with it and think, 'I have to take my mind off myself!'
My father came from a country called Bolivia. He was of Spanish descent. I never went to Bolivia until I was 60 years old, but apparently when he was 17, he had already planned his entire academic curriculum so that he could graduate high school and enter college in the United States. That's how much he wanted to come to this country.
I inherited good skin from my mother, and I stay away from soap, which dries it out.
Raquel Welch is an American actress and singer.
