Bette Davis Quotes

1. 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.

 


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

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

4. 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.

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


6. Everybody has a heart. Except some people.


7. I am just too much. 


8. Old age is no place for sissies.

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

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

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

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

13. 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.

14. Sex is God's joke on human beings.

15. I survived because I was tougher than anybody else.

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

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




18. Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.

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

20. 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.

21. 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.

22. 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.

23. 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.

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

25. I've always liked men better than women.

26. Strong women only marry weak men.

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

34. 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

42. I was the Marlon Brando of my generation.

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

44. I will never be below the title.

45. I work to stay alive.

46. 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.

47. 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.



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

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

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

51. I've lost my faith in science.

52. It is my last wish to be burried sitting up.

53. That's me: an old kazoo with some sparklers.

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



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

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

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


58. 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.

59. Don't get up. And please stop acting as if I were the queen mother!

60. 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.





61. I was never beautiful like Miss Hayworth or Miss Lamarr. I was known as the little brown wren. Who'd want to get me at the end of the picture?

62. 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.

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

64. I've no time for broads who want to rule the world alone. Without men, who'd do up the zipper on the back of your dress?

65. I would take a bad script and a good director any day against a good script and a bad director. 



66. Technicolor makes me look like death warmed over.



67. Pray to God and say the lines.

68. Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone, but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.

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

70. First time was when I was 26 and got married - and it was hell waiting. 

71. The weak are the most treacherous of us all. They come to the strong and drain them. They are bottomless. They are insatiable. They are always parched and always bitter. They are everyone's concern and like vampires they suck out life's blood. 





72. 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.

73. Three years ago I was forty... forty! Four-oh! That slipped out. Now I suddenly feel as if I've taken all my clothes off.

74. 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. 

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


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


77. My darling,it is late and I am very tired of youth, love, and self-sacrafice.

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

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

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

81. When a man gives his opinion he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion she's a bitch.

82. Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy night!


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


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

85. We're all busy little bees, full of stings, making honey day and night, aren't we honey?

86. 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.

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

88. 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.



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

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

91. I never wished I’d been a man. I always felt like a woman and wanted to be a woman. I wanted to be fulfilled professionally and personally, as a woman. There are some who might say I had penis envy, but I only had penis admiration.

92. I wouldn't piss on her if she was on fire." (in reference to "Joan Crawford")






93. (On rival Joan Crawford): "She has slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie."

94. What a fool I was to come to Hollywood where they only understand platinum blondes and where legs are more important than talent.

95. I would advise any woman against having an affair with a married man believing he will ever leave his wife, no matter how often he says his wife does not understand him. Love is not as necessary to a man's happiness as it is to a woman's. If her marriage is satisfactory, a woman will seldom stray. A man can be totally contented and still be out howling at the moon.


96. Of course I replaced my father. I became my own father and everyone else's. (referring to her parents' divorce when she was 7)

97. (when told not to speak ill of the dead) Just because someone is dead does not mean they have changed!

98. At one time, the actress, who won Oscars for Dangerous (1935) and Jezebel (1938) had quite a reputation for being difficult - "At one time?!" she erupts. "I've been known as difficult for 50 years, practically! What do you mean "at one time"?! Nooo, I've been like this for 50 years. And it's always always to make it the best film I can make it!

99. You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good . . . Joan Crawford is dead. Good! (on the death of her long-time nemesis)

100. He was just beautiful...Errol (Flynn). He himself openly said I don't know really anything about acting, and I admire his honesty because he's absolutely right.

101. (on Errol Flynn) He was not an actor of enormous talent - he would have admitted that himself - but in all those swashbuckling things he was beautiful.

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

103. I always had the will to win. I felt it baking cookies. They had to be the best cookies anyone baked.

104. I have never known the great actor who... didn't plan eventually to direct or produce. If he has no such dream, he is usually bitter, ungratified and eventually alcoholic.




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

106. (On her character in All About Eve (1950)): "Margo Channing was not a bitch. She was an actress who was getting older and was not too happy about it. And why should she? Anyone who says that life begins at 40 is full of it. As people get older their bodies begin to decay. They get sick. They forget things. What's good about that?"

107. (on John Wayne) I certainly would have given anything to have worked with John Wayne. He's the most attractive man who ever walked the earth, I think.







108. (After having blown the same line several times in Hollywood Canteen (1944), in which she plays herself): I don't know what's wrong with me, but I think I just can't play myself. I don't know how! But, if you give me a drink - give me a cigarette - give me a gun - I'll play any old bag you want me to. I just can't play myself!

109. I want to die with my high heels on, still in action. (Before taking her final flight in 1989)

110. I was a person who couldn't make divorce work. For me, there's nothing lonelier than a turned-down toilet seat.



111. (on director Lindsay Anderson) I think he's a very talented man, but I think he's a difficult man to work with. He really prefers theater and not film, and that's a little depressing, I must say.

112. Beyond the Forest (1949) was a terrible movie! It had the longest death scene ever seen on the screen.

113. When I die, they'll probably auction off my false eyelashes.

114. (Joan Crawford) and I have never been warm friends. We are not simpatico. I admire her, and yet I feel uncomfortable with her. To me, she is the personification of the Movie Star. I have always felt her greatest performance is Crawford being Crawford.

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






116. I had to be the monster for both of us. (commenting about her mother, an aspiring actress)

117. (referring to her fourth husband, Gary Merrill): Gary was a macho man, but none of my husbands was ever man enough to become Mr. Bette Davis.

118. (on Claude Rains) My favorite person to work with was Claude Rains.

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

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


121. I'll play with it first and tell you what it is later.


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

123. Evil people you never forget them. And that's the aim of any actress-never to be forgotten.

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

125. Who gossips so much around here?

126. If my guests do not like it here, I suggest they accompany you to the nursery... where I am sure you will all feel more at home.


127. It is my last wish to be buried sitting up.


128. I must start wearing a watch. I never have you know.

129. Performance number 1,000, if I play it that long, will take place in a well-padded booby-hatch.

130. I've lost my faith in science.

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