Top 174 Quotes & Sayings by Barbra Streisand - Page 3

How can we accept a situation in which there are no longer orchestras, choruses, libraries or art classes to nourish our children? We need more support for the arts, not less -- particularly to make this rich world available to young people whose vision is choked by a stark reality. How many children, who have no other outlet in their lives for their grief, have found solace in an instrument to play or a canvas to paint on? When you take into consideration the development of the human heart, soul and imagination, don't the arts take on just as much importance as math or science?

I tell you what I envy about people in love - I'd love it if someone knew me I mean really knew me. What I like what I'm afraid of what kind of toothpaste I use." - Rose Morgan

I don't feel like a legend. I feel like a work in progress.

A large part of me is pure nebbish - plain, dull, uninteresting. There's a more flamboyant part, too. Obviously.

progress, whatever your definition of it, is not inevitable.

I don't like the word 'superstar'. It has ridiculous implications. These words - star, stupor, superstar, stupid star - they're misleading. It's a myth.

I just don't like the idea of her singing my songs. Who the hell does she thinks she is? The world doesn't need another Streisand! (on Diana Ross)

Our role as artist is more controversial now because there are those, claiming the absolute authority of religion, who detest much of our work as much as they detest most of our politics. Instead of rationally debating subjects like abortion or gay rights, they condemn as immoral those who favor choice and tolerance. They disown their own dark side and magnify everyone else's until, at the extreme, doctors are murdered in the name of protecting life. I wonder, who is this God they invoke, who is so petty and mean? Is God really against gun control and food stamps for poor children?

I believe in love and lust and sex and romance. I don't want everything to add up to some perfect equation. I want mess and chaos. I want someone to go crazy out of his mind for me. I want to feel passion and heat and sweat and madness. I want valenties and cupids and all of that crap. I want it all.

I never liked stardom. It's weird to me. I only like the creative process. I only like the work.

Believe in the power of your voice! Be yourself. Everyone is unique.

A man who graduated high in his class at Yale Law School and made partnership in a top law firm would be celebrated. But a woman who accomplishes this is treated with suspicion.

I can say, 'I am terribly frightened and fear is terrible and awful and it makes me uncomfortable, so I won't do that because it makes me uncomfortable.' Or I could say, 'Get used to being uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable doing something that's risky. But so what? Do you want to stagnate and just be comfortable?'

It’s like an American tradition. A person gets successful and then he’s supposed to change for the worse. It’s silly.

The idea of a liberal media bias is simply a myth. If only it were true, we might have a more humane, open-minded, and ultimately effective public debate on the issues facing the country.

Being a celebrity is a no-win situation. If you get along with your co-star you're having an affair, if you don't you're having a feud.

I hate tooting my own horn, but after Steven Spielberg saw Yentl, he said: "I wish I could tell you how to fix your picture, but I can't. It's the best film I've seen since Citizen Kane".

You know, I can't remember my good reviews. I remember negative ones. They stay in my mind.

We cannot let the right wing roll back more than thirty years of social progress.

The moral immune system of this country has been weakened and attacked, and the AIDS virus is the perfect metaphor for it. The malignant neglect of the last twelve years has led to breakdown of our country's immune system, environmentally, culturally, politically, spiritually and physically.

It takes me about 10 years to appreciate what it is I've done.

I can't stand to see red in my profit-or-loss column. I'm Taurus the bull, so I react to red. If I see it, I sell my stocks quickly.

It's not a date. We're just agreeing to eat at the same table.

I'd take out a joint and light it. First, just faking it. Then I started lighting live joints, passing them around to the band, you know. I was great, it relieved all my tensions. And I ended up with the greatest supply of grass ever. Other acts up and down the Strip heard about what I was doing - Little Anthony and the Imperials, people like that - and started sending me the best dope in the world. I never ran out.

I’d rather not talk about money. It’s kind of gross.

Moviemakers can be late to a subject, or afraid, but often they are brave and ahead of their time.

Why don't you have a cup of coffee at least? I, um, I'm a little low in sugar and I don't have any cream, but it's real coffee.

You know, for me, the realization that two people should have the right to form a sacred union regardless of their gender was strengthened when I saw a performance of the play The Normal Heart in 1985. After feeling the love those two men had for each other, I dare anybody not to want them to get married by the end.

No one should have to conform to some mythical concept of the ideal family.

I prefer things that are private, so I love recording and I love making films, as a filmmaker, because it uses every bit of what you have experienced or know, whether it's graphics composition, decorating, psychology, storytelling, or whatever it is. It's a wonderful thing.

Everybody's frightened a bit. But how many of us just go through the fear and do it anyway?

Sometimes, when you work with mediocre talents, they feel entitled. They act like stars. Genuinely talented people don't.

I think, is wonderful about growing older, is appreciation for the miracle of existence, of life. I thank God every day. I also do believe that belief and imagination manifests reality. And therefore, even though it took twenty-five years, I did find the house, eventually, and the man I could live with.

If a man wants to get it right, he's looked up to and respected. If a woman wants to get it right, she's difficult or impossible. If he acts, produces and directs, he's called multitalented. If she does the same thing, she's called vain and egotistical.

I don't know why it is that we need to denigrate, to knock down. It's so sick.

I was a personality before I became a person.

I am a nice person. I care about my driver having lunch, you know.

Art transcends politics this weekend.

The result [Republicans winning the Senate] would be devastating for reproductive choice, the environment, civil liberties, Social Security and health care, as well as corporate accountability.

New York critics - I hear when one of them watched "A Star Is Born", he talked back to the screen.

I don't think I'm tough in a so called tough way. I'm tough on myself.

I wasn't supported, I wasn't given any self-esteem.

And remember, this was a president (George W. Bush) who was selected by the Supreme Court rather than the people.

How could such a destructive man [referring to Bush] be so popular with the American people?... Not only is he poisoning our air and water - he's poisoning our political system as well.

I can't cook, at all. I would not know how to make coffee. I took cooking classes, so I know how to make chocolate soufflé, but ask me if I want to make soufflé. I let somebody else make the chocolate soufflé, and I eat it. I found that, when I took cooking classes and tried to cook, I didn't want to eat it. The joy was gone. I was always filthy with the stuff, and then had to clean it up. I don't like that.

I like to stay home a lot. I like to do other things, too, like decorate.

We elected a President, not a Pope.

I worked in a Chinese restaurant.

It's true that I have a very healthy ego; anybody who creates does.

You don't ask a man, 'Do you want to be in control [of your job]?' You assume he wants control. Why would a woman be any different?

The artist as citizen is here to stay.

He (son Jason) doesn't see me as a (gay) icon, he sees me as his mother who touches his hair too much. No, I love being an icon to anybody. Equal rights, you know?

I'm a terrible lip-syncer anyway because I have to be in the moment, and I can't lip-sync to something I recorded three months before.

What is dangerous about the far right is not that it takes religion seriously - most of us do - but rather that it condemns all other spiritual choices - the Buddhist, the Jew, the Muslim, and many others who consider themselves to be good Christians. The wall of separation between church and state is needed precisely because religion, like art, is too important a part of the human experience to be choked by the hands of censors.