I never said, "I want to be alone." I only said, "I want to be let alone! There is all the difference.

Quoted in John Bainbridge, Garbo (Doubleday, 1955) and "To Be Herself", Life (January 24, 1955; Vol. 38, No. 4), p. 113; as the Russian ballerina Grusinskaya to Baron Felix von Gaigern in Grand Hotel (1932), Garbo had said "I want to be alone." These words had become associated with Garbo herself in the public imagination.