Top 157 Quotes & Sayings by Bette Davis - Page 2

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.

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

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

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

There's only one way to work -- like hell.

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

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

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

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

Success only breeds a new goal

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

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

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.

Temperament is something that is an integral part of the artist. Not temper, temperament. There is a vast difference.

You've got to know someone pretty well to hate them.

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

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.

Yes, burn your bridges.

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

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.

I didn't forget your breakfast. I didn't bring your breakfast. Because you didn't eat your din-din.

Life is the past, the present and the perhaps.

Getting old is not for sissies.

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.

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

Your luck is how you treat people.

There is a certain ecstasy in wanting things you can't get.

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.

I wouldn't piss on Joan Crawford if she were on fire.

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

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

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.

Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.

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

Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night! - As Margo Channing in All About Eve

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.

[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.

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.

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.

The real actor - like any real artistj- has a direct line to the collective heart.

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

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

If everybody likes you, you're pretty dull.

I'm the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.

You can lose everything but you can't lose your talent!

People stood on their chairs, cheering and waving. And it was all for me! Waves of love flooded the stage and washed over me. I started to cry. The sweetness of such a moment is impossible to describe. One is both lover and beloved. ... I'd found the one true, enduring romance of my life.

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

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.

One can make more enemies as a female with a brain, I think.

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

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.

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.

Mother of three; divorcee; American. Twenty years experience as an actress in motion pictures. Mobile still and more affable than rumour would have it. Wants steady employment in Hollywood. (Has had Broadway). References upon request.

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.

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

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.

If Hollywood didn't work out, I was prepared to be the best secretary in the world.