We won't bother to start with a quote today, but with some choice gossip that doesn't need any help.

I ask -- isn't CBS grooming the appealing Neil Patrick Harris to take over when David Letterman leaves his post?

You know Neil -- he has starred for six seasons on...

"If you liked Loving Frank and The Paris Wife, you'll love Freud's Mistress, says Katie Couric.

• Well, I took Katie's advice without even knowing I was taking it.

Several years ago, before the Internet happened, I read a book by two writers who live in Los Angeles and...

"OH don't be ridiculous, Andrea. Everybody wants this. Everybody wants to be us," says Meryl Streep, portraying Anna Wintour, to Anne Hathaway toward the end of "The Devil Wears Prada," when Anne's character quits her job.

This is where Anne becomes all idealistic and opts out of the high life...

"CHANNING TATUM is about to make the transition from big star to huge star. If he does, he'll become that rarest of all things: an old-fashioned movie star in the age of reality TV."

So writes Rich Cohen in the new issue of Vanity Fair with Mr. Tatum on...

"SO, HOW did you get all these big stars to participate in this documentary?" I asked Liz Garbus, the director of "Love, Marilyn," which appears on HBO June 17th.

Garbus replied, "One word--Marilyn! Every person I approached wanted in, as soon as they heard that name."

"Love, Marilyn," takes an...

"IT IS a hopeless endeavor to attract people to the theater unless they can first be brought to believe they'll never get in." Charles Dickens.

• EVEN IF you didn't see or didn't like "Kinky Boots" the fabulous musical that swept the Tony Awards Sunday night, how could you not...

"Wet, she's a star. Dry, she ain't!" said Fanny Brice about MGM's swimming box-office queen Esther Williams, who died last Friday at age 91.

Williams, who graduated from swimming champion to movie queen, was incredibly popular during the late 1940s and 50s. MGM fashioned the most elaborate "wet" musical numbers...

"In 2008, citizens of Stephenville gained national media attention when dozens of residents reported UFOs the size of a football field, similar to the historic Arizona mass sighting of March 1997," says Wikipedia.

• I received a letter from the one and only Jane Hickie, one of the most effective and...

"Something back from the dead was always bad news. Movies taught me that. For every one Jesus you get a million zombies," says writer David Wong.

• The world did not end on December 22, 2012, as some insisted it would, because of the ancient Mayan calendar. So, I figured...

"Don't put your daughter on the stage Mrs. Worthington," goes the Noel Coward ditty.

Today, Will Smith might be thinking along the same lines -- don't put your son in your movies Mr. Smith!

After Earth, the post-apocalyptic sci-fi entry which stars Will and his son Jaden, not only...

"Terrible is the temptation to do good," wrote Bertolt Brecht.

Oh, fap, to the Tony Awards, the great Bette Midler must have said at the end of last week. Although she didn't get nominated for her performance in the one-woman play by John Logan -- I'll Eat You...

"What people think of me is none of my business!"

This has been attributed to Oscar Wilde, Mae West and Gary Oldman. So, who do you think said it?

• The music world lost a great champion over Memorial Day. She was Jean Bach, a beauty in her 90s...

"Special effects and 3-D will not dazzle on their own merits forever; novelty wears off in the face of exposure to excellence. Sequels will just have to get better and cost less if they are to survive into the future."

So writes producer Lynda Obst in her fascinating, way-inside-the-biz book,...

"I evaluated myself very carefully. It sounds vain and egotistical to say, but I knew I was good-looking."

That was the late Greg Bautzer, Hollywood lawyer and romancer deluxe.

• Bautzer is the subject of a fascinating new biography, The Man Who Seduced Hollywood: The Life and Loves of Greg...

"What a rage for fame attends both great and small! Better be damned than mentioned not at all!" wrote Peter Pindar.

• I was in Orso, the under-stated theatre café on West 44th Street the other night, and there was music tycoon Clive Davis with his entire family. I asked...

"There's smoking in this building, ma'am."

"What are you going to do, arrest me for smoking?"

So it went between murder suspect Sharon Stone and the detectives grilling her in Basic Instinct. Moments later Sharon briefly uncrossed her legs and made movie history. ("I forgot my panties that day," Stone...

"China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese," said Charles de Gaulle, with incredible insight.

• Fans of Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon were caught by surprise when they learned that a sequel is being planned. Thirteen years after the original film debuted, they'd just about given up...

"Ya, know, from the way that dame walks, she would have made a damn fine stripper in her day!"

So says Tessie Tura, commenting on Mama Rose, in "Gypsy." (Tessie is one of the three strippers who belt out "You Gotta Have a Gimmick!")

• I've had "Gypsy" on my...

"Charity begins at home!" some wise philosopher once said.

In this particular case, charity is home!

• I went to a fundraiser last week for The Neighborhood Coalition where they had a "live auction' and guests began offering up huge sums of money just to get it to end! They...

"There's nothing more intriguing than a movie star wrapped like a mummy playing someone just emerging from plastic surgery. Think Humphrey Bogart in Dark Passage, Elizabeth Taylor in Ash Wednesday. And now, in HBO's Behind the Candelabra, Michael Douglas playing Liberace, the swishy but closeted Las Vegas piano player. Matt...