Bette Davis Quotes
"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."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Successful, Actors, Psychoanalysis)
"People often become actresses because of something they dislike about themselves: They pretend they are someone else."
- Bette Davis
(Related: People)
"Old age is no place for sissies."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Age, Old)
"Oh, don't let's ask for the moon. We've already got the stars."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Moon, Stars)
"My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Purpose, Aggression, Today)
"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."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Men, Women)
"Locations are all tough, all miserable. I never left the sound stage for 18 years at Warners. We never went outside the studio, not even for big scenes."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Sound, Years)
"If you've never been hated by your child, you've never been a parent."
- Bette Davis
"It is my last wish to be burried sitting up."
- Bette Davis
"In this business, until you're known as a monster you're not a star."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Business)
"In this rat-race everybody's guilty till proved innocent!"
- Bette Davis
"When a man gives his opinion he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion she's a bitch."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Man, Opinion, Woman)
"Sex is God's joke on human beings."
- Bette Davis
(Related: God, Sex)
"Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone-but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Love)
"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."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Money, Life, Dream, Chance, Labor, Lonely)
"Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Acting, Creation, Trade, Wonder)
"With the newspaper strike on, I wouldn't consider dying."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Dying)
"Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it's because I'm not a bitch. Maybe that's why Miss Crawford always plays ladies."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Ladies)
"I will never be below the title."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Will)
"We movie stars all end up by ourselves. Who knows? Maybe we want to."
- Bette Davis
(Related: End, Stars, Want)
"I've lost my faith in science."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Faith, Science)
"Wave after wave of love flooded the stage and washed over me, the beginning of the one great durable romance of my life."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Life, Love, Romance, Beginning)
"To look back is to relax one's vigil."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Relax)
"Strong women only marry weak men."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Men, Women)
"This has always been a motto of mine: Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Work, Order)
"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."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Truth, People, Credulity, Heroes, Now, Old, Today, Words)
"The only reason anyone goes to Broadway is because they can't get work in the movies."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Movies, Work, Reason)
"The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he's dead."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Life, Key)
"The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"
- Bette Davis
(Related: Time, Baby, Stairs)
"That's me: an old kazoo with some sparklers."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Old)
"Today everyone is a star - they're all billed as 'starring' or 'also starring'. In my day, we earned that recognition."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Day, Today)
"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."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Hell, Waiting)
"A sure way to lose happiness, I found, is to want it at the expense of everything else."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Happiness, Want)
"Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Life, Acting)
"An affair now and then is good for a marriage. It adds spice, stops it from getting boring... I ought to know."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Marriage, Now)
"Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Work, Order)
"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."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Home, Jungle, World)
"I work to stay alive."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Work)
"Everybody has a heart. Except some people."
- Bette Davis
(Related: People, Heart)
"I've always liked men better than women."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Men, Women)
"Gay Liberation? I ain't against it, it's just that there's nothing in it for me."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Gay, Nothing)
"Good actors I've worked with all started out making faces in a mirror, and you keep making faces all your life."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Life, Actors, Faces)
"Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Hollywood, Pretty, Realism)
"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."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Success, Work, Goal, Eternity)
"I am just too much."
- Bette Davis
"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."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Business, Actor, Enemy, Regret)
"I'm the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived."
- Bette Davis
"Brought up to respect the conventions, love had to end in marriage. I'm afraid it did."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Love, Marriage, End, Respect)
"I don't take the movies seriously, and anyone who does is in for a headache."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Movies)
"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."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Man)
"I'd luv to kiss ya, but I just washed my hair."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Kiss, Hair)
"I will not retire while I've still got my legs and my make-up box."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Will)
"I went back to work because someone had to pay for the groceries."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Work)
"I was the Marlon Brando of my generation."
- Bette Davis
"I survived because I was tougher than anybody else."
- Bette Davis
"I sent my flowers across the hall to Mrs Nixon but her husband remembered what a Democrat I am and sent them back."
- Bette Davis
(Related: HusbFlowers, Nixon)
"I often think that a slightly exposed shoulder emerging from a long satin nightgown packs more sex than two naked bodies in bed."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Sex, Bed)
"I never did pal around with actresses. Their talk usually bored me to tears."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Talk, Tears)
"I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don't remember ever having seen one weep."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Actor)
"I don't think of myself as a character actress - that's become a phrase which means you've had it."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Character)
"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."
- Bette Davis
(Related: Women, Boys, Famous)