Bette Davis quotes:

+1
Share
Pin
Like
Send
Share
  • There are new words now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains, the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch.

  • The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

  • I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple devoured has seeds. It is endless.

  • To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.

  • My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.

  • The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he's dead.

  • Wave after wave of love flooded the stage and washed over me, the beginning of the one great durable romance of my life.

  • Old age is no place for sissies.

  • At 50, I thought proudly: Here we are, half century! Being 60 was fairly frightening. You want to know how I spent my 70th birthday? I put on a completely black face, a fuzzy black Afro wig, wore black clothes and hung a black wreath on my door.

  • Brought up to respect the conventions, love had to end in marriage. I'm afraid it did.

  • I was the Marlon Brando of my generation.

  • If you've never been hated by your child, you've never been a parent.

  • We movie stars all end up by ourselves. Who knows? Maybe we want to.

  • Don't you hate people who drink white wine? I mean, my dear, every alcoholic in town is getting falling-down drunk on white wine. They think they aren't drunks because they only drink wine. Never, never trust anyone who asks for white wine. It means they're phonies.

  • Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.

  • There comes a time in every woman's life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.

  • I do not regret one professional enemy I have made. Any actor who doesn't dare to make an enemy should get out of the business.

  • People often become actresses because of something they dislike about themselves: They pretend they are someone else.

  • I went back to work because someone had to pay for the groceries.

  • I've lost my faith in science.

  • This has always been a motto of mine: Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.

  • Men become much more attractive when they start looking older. But it doesn't do much for women, though we do have an advantage: make-up.

  • Actually, I think business women are better women at home, if you want to know the truth because you do understand what goes into a day's work out in the world, a very nerve-racking affair.

  • The only way you can become a legend is in your coffin

  • I wanted to be the first to win three Oscars, but Miss Hepburn has done it. Actually it hasn't been done. Miss Hepburn only won half an Oscar. If they'd given me half an Oscar I would have thrown it back in their faces. You see, I'm an Aries. I never lose.

  • I'd luv to kiss ya, but I just washed my hair."

  • I never did pal around with actresses. Their talk usually bored me to tears.

  • Today everyone is a star - they're all billed as 'starring' or 'also starring'. In my day, we earned that recognition.

  • If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.

  • In this business, until you're known as a monster, you're not a star

  • Without discipline and detachment, an actor is an emotional slob, spilling his insides out. This abandonment is having an unfortunate vogue. It is tasteless, formless, absurd. Without containment there is no art. All this vomiting and wheezing and bursting at the seams is no more great acting than the convulsions of raving maniacs.

  • I'm the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.

  • I sent my flowers across the hall to Mrs Nixon but her husband remembered what a Democrat I am and sent them back.

  • I'd marry again if I found a man who had fifteen million dollars, would sign over half to me, and guarantee that he'd be dead within a year.

  • I often think that a slightly exposed shoulder emerging from a long satin nightgown packs more sex than two naked bodies in bed.

  • A sure way to lose happiness, I found, is to want it at the expense of everything else.

  • I was never very interested in boys - and there were plenty of them - vying with one another to see how many famous women they would get into the hay.

  • Getting old is not for sissies.

  • Discipline is a symbol of caring to a child.He needs guidance.If there is love, there is no such thing as being too tough with a child. A parent must also not be afraid to hang himself. If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.

  • I'd luv to kiss ya, but I just washed my hair.

  • I don't take the movies seriously, and anyone who does is in for a headache.

  • Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism.

  • I want to die with my high heels on, still in action.

  • Among the reasons marriages fail, sex ranks no higher than fourth, behind money, having only one bathroom, and an inability to communicate, reasons one, two and three.

  • I survived because I was tougher than anybody else.

  • It's a rare man who can stand being around an intelligent woman, let alone married to her.

  • Basically, I believe the world is a jungle, and if it's not a bit of a jungle in the home, a child cannot possibly be fit to enter the outside world.

  • I have been uncompromising, peppery, intractable, monomaniacal, tactless, volatile, and oftentimes disagreeable... I suppose I'm larger than life.

  • I guess I'm larger than life. That's my problem.

  • I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don't remember ever having seen one weep.

  • I will not retire while I've still got my legs and my make-up box.

  • I think men have got to change an awful lot. They still prefer the little woman.

  • I've been lucky. I'll be lucky again.

  • The male ego with few exceptions is elephantine to start with.

  • I may not have been wearing a mink coat, but I was traveling with a dog. That should have made you think I was an actress!

  • Never, never trust anyone who asks for white wine. It means they're phonies.

  • Success only breeds a new goal

  • I have eyes like a bullfrog, a neck like an ostrich and long, limp hair. You just have to be good to survive with that equipment.

  • Psychoanalysis. Almost went three times - almost. Then I decided what was peculiar about me was probably what made me successful. I've seen some very talented actors go into analysis and really lose it.

  • I think I'll have a large order of prognosis negative.

  • In this rat-race everybody's guilty till proved innocent!

  • Who gossips so much around here

  • If you want a thing done well, get a couple of old broads to do it.

  • I don't think of myself as a character actress - that's become a phrase which means you've had it

  • To look back is to relax one's vigil.

  • Strong women only marry weak men.

  • From the moment I was six I felt sexy. And let me tell you it was hell, sheer hell, waiting to do something about it.

  • An affair now and then is good for a marriage. It adds spice, stops it from getting boring... I ought to know.

  • Some young Hollywood starlets remind me of my grandmother's old farmhouse -- all painted up nice on the front side, a big swing on the backside, and nothing whatsoever in the attic.

  • I work to stay alive.

  • I was thought to be 'stuck up.' I wasn't. I was just sure of myself. This is and always has been an unforgivable quality to the unsure.

  • She did it the hard way.

  • Good actors I've worked with all started out making faces in a mirror, and you keep making faces all your life.

  • Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.

  • If everybody likes you, you're pretty dull.

  • The only reason anyone goes to Broadway is because they can't get work in the movies.

  • Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation.

  • Life is a jest; and all things show it. I thought so once; but now I know it.

  • It's better to be hated for who you are, than to be loved for someone you're not. It's a sign of your worth sometimes, if you're hated by the right people.

  • You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good . . . Joan Crawford is dead. Good.

  • You will never be happier than you expect. To change your happiness, change your expectation.

  • Life is the past, the present and the perhaps.

  • It's true we don't know what we've got until its gone, but we don't know what we've been missing until it arrives. Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.

  • If everyone likes you, you're not doing it right.

  • In this business, until you're known as a monster you're not a star.

  • The out-of-work actor wears out more than shoe leather. The very sensibilities that make him an artist are shattered by the disregard he is shown as a human being.

  • Oh, don't let's ask for the moon. We've already got the stars.

  • Success is built on disappointment, and disappointment is inherent in all success.

  • You should know me well enough by now to know I don't ask for things I don't think I can get.

  • I am a woman meant for a man, but I never found a man who could compete.

  • You mustn't miss the moment. There's only one first sailing into Rio harbor.

  • Once the love bug wears off, as it inevitably does, you are shocked to discover that you really didn't know the object of your affections at all. We know this to be so, even as we repeat the same mistake over and over and over.

  • The secret of marriage is: separate bedrooms and separate bathrooms.

  • You know what I'm going to have on my gravestone? 'She did it the hard way.'

  • There was more good acting at Hollywood parties than ever appeared on the screen.

  • One begins to realize that one is getting old when the birthday candles weigh more than the cake.

  • You know what nostalgia is, don't you? It's basically a matter of recalling the fun without reliving the pain.

  • There may be a heaven, but if Joan Crawford is there, I'm not going.

  • [On gay men:] Let me say, a more artistic, appreciative group of people for the arts does not exist ... They are more knowledgeable, more loving of the arts. They make the average male look stupid.

  • It has been my experience that one cannot, in any shape or form, depend on human relations for lasting reward. It is only work that truly satisfies.

  • I will never be below the title.

  • I never said anything that was unprintable. Never said anything just for the sake of being startling.

  • I wouldnt piss on Joan Crawford if she were on fire

  • Home is where you go to when you've nowhere to go.

  • Everybody has a heart. Except some people.

  • I've always liked men better than women.

  • It's a very independent male creature that lives alone, and a lot of independent females who live alone. It's all very sad but it's much easier for both sexes to do it this way nowadays.

  • Yes, burn your bridges.

  • Technicolor makes me look like death warmed over.

  • Being called very, very difficult is the beginning of success. Until you're called very, very difficult you're really nobody at all.

  • With the newspaper strike on, I wouldn't consider dying.

  • I firmly believe, however, that if your children have never hated you, you have failed as a parent.

  • Gay Liberation? I ain't against it, it's just that there's nothing in it for me.

  • If everybody likes you, you are not a very interesting person.

  • The act of sex, gratifying as it may be, is God's joke on humanity. It is man's last desperate stand at superintendency.

  • She's the original good time who was had by all.

  • One can be respected with the truth in Hollywood just as much as anywhere else you know or else I wouldn't have had a career.

  • Women are the essential part of the theater but the writers are not writing about women. I think they're too perplexed about the whole female situation probably.

  • Pray to God and say the lines.

  • I have always felt proud of my Oscars and my numerous nominations. This pride is due to the fact it was the result of voters from the members of my own profession. This, of course, is a great compliment for one's work. I hope each winner of an Oscar is as thrilled as I was when I received mine.

+1
Share
Pin
Like
Send
Share