Top 157 Quotes & Sayings by Bette Davis
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American actress Bette Davis.
Last updated on November 5, 2024.
The only reason anyone goes to Broadway is because they can't get work in the movies.
My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.
That's me: an old kazoo with some sparklers.
I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don't remember ever having seen one weep.
People often become actresses because of something they dislike about themselves: They pretend they are someone else.
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.
I work to stay alive.
This has always been a motto of mine: Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.
In this rat-race everybody's guilty till proved innocent!
Today everyone is a star - they're all billed as 'starring' or 'also starring'. In my day, we earned that recognition.
Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation.
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.
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.
Brought up to respect the conventions, love had to end in marriage. I'm afraid it did.
I've lost my faith in science.
An affair now and then is good for a marriage. It adds spice, stops it from getting boring... I ought to know.
Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.
Everybody has a heart. Except some people.
I survived because I was tougher than anybody else.
The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he's dead.
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.
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.
I'd like to kiss ya, but I just washed my hair.
Strong women only marry weak men.
Wave after wave of love flooded the stage and washed over me, the beginning of the one great durable romance of my life.
A sure way to lose happiness, I found, is to want it at the expense of everything else.
Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism.
I often think that a slightly exposed shoulder emerging from a long satin nightgown packs more sex than two naked bodies in bed.
I never did pal around with actresses. Their talk usually bored me to tears.
Sex is God's joke on human beings.
I will never be below the title.
I've always liked men better than women.
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 went back to work because someone had to pay for the groceries.
I am just too much.
Gay Liberation? I ain't against it, it's just that there's nothing in it for me.
Good actors I've worked with all started out making faces in a mirror, and you keep making faces all your life.
I don't take the movies seriously, and anyone who does is in for a headache.
I will not retire while I've still got my legs and my make-up box.
Old age is no place for sissies.
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.
I was the Marlon Brando of my generation.
If you've never been hated by your child, you've never been a parent.
It is my last wish to be burried sitting up.
Life is a jest; and all things show it. I thought so once; but now I know it.
Oh, don't let's ask for the moon. We've already got the stars.
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.
In this business, until you're known as a monster you're not a star.
Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.
With the newspaper strike on, I wouldn't consider dying.
We movie stars all end up by ourselves. Who knows? Maybe we want to.
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.
To look back is to relax one's vigil.
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.
I sent my flowers across the hall to Mrs Nixon but her husband remembered what a Democrat I am and sent them back.
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.
The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
I don't think of myself as a character actress - that's become a phrase which means you've had it.
You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good . . . Joan Crawford is dead. Good.
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.
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