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