Just like my father, I've always loved education. In school I was a member of the honor society.
— Barbra Streisand
I'm sure that I don't know everything I want to know. I have so much more to learn.
I'd started going to acting classes at 14, played 'Medea' at 15 and really wanted to be a classical actress.
The audience is the barometer of the truth.
Most awards, you know, they don't give you unless you go and get them - did you know that? Terribly discouraging.
I go by instinct - I don't worry about experience.
I've been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good.
We have a president who stole the presidency through family ties, arrogance and intimidation, employing Republican operatives to exercise the tactics of voter fraud by disenfranchising thousands of blacks, elderly Jews and other minorities.
Why is it men are permitted to be obsessed about their work, but women are only permitted to be obsessed about men?
Success to me is having ten honeydew melons and eating only the top half of each slice.
Men are allowed to have passion and commitment for their work... a woman is allowed that feeling for a man, but not her work.
I'm tired of malicious articles slandering me.
I knew that with a mouth like mine, I just hadda be a star or something.
I don't care what you say about me. Just be sure to spell my name wrong.
What does it mean when people applaud? Should I give 'em money? Say thank you? Lift my dress? The lack of applause - that I can respond to.
Why does a woman work ten years to change a man's habits and then complain that he's not the man she married?
I can take any truth; just don't lie to me.
I don't like talking about myself and I don't like talking about the work.
I must have got my detailed, obsessive streak from my father, who was an English teacher, because my mother wasn't like me at all.
A man who graduated high in his class at Yale Law School and made partnership in a top law firm would be celebrated. A man who invested wisely would be admired, but a woman who accomplishes this is treated with suspicion.
You have got to discover you, what you do, and trust it.
There is nothing more important in life than love.
I don't enjoy public performances and being up on a stage. I don't enjoy the glamour. Like tonight, I am up on stage and my feet hurt.
I arrived in Hollywood without having my nose fixed, my teeth capped, or my name changed. That is very gratifying to me.
Why am I so famous? What am I doing right? What are the others doing wrong?
Myths are a waste of time. They prevent progression.
Marlon Brando. The finest actor who ever lived. He was my idol when I was 13. He's done enough work to last two lifetimes. Everything I do, I think: Can Brando play this with me?
I'm not that ambitious any more. I just like my privacy. I wish I really wasn't talked about at all.
I just don't want to be hampered by my own limitations.
I am simple, complex, generous, selfish, unattractive, beautiful, lazy, and driven.
They're called 'angels' because they're in heaven until the reviews come out.
I think of myself as a girl from Brooklyn.
Performing, for me, has always been a very inner process.
Oh God, don't envy me, I have my own pains.
What is exciting is not for one person to be stronger than the other... but for two people to have met their match and yet they are equally as stubborn, as obstinate, as passionate, as crazy as the other.
It is every woman's dream to be some man's dream woman.
The audience is the best judge of anything. They cannot be lied to. Truth brings them closer. A moment that lags - they're gonna cough.
I find George Bush and Dick Cheney frightening, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft frightening.
How I wish we lived in a time when laws were not necessary to safeguard us from discrimination.
To have ego means to believe in your own strength. And to also be open to other people's views. It is to be open, not closed. So, yes, my ego is big, but it's also very small in some areas. My ego is responsible for my doing what I do - bad or good.
My biggest nightmare is I'm driving home and get sick and go to hospital. I say: 'Please help me.' And the people say: 'Hey, you look like...' And I'm dying while they're wondering whether I'm Barbra Streisand.
I've considered having my nose fixed. But I didn't trust anyone enough. If I could do it myself with a mirror.
I wish I could be like Shaw who once read a bad review of one of his plays, called the critic and said: 'I have your review in front of me and soon it will be behind me.'
I hated singing. I wanted to be an actress. But I don't think I'd have made it any other way.
Around people I don't know, I'm totally at a loss.
I was a personality before I became a person - I am simple, complex, generous, selfish, unattractive, beautiful, lazy and driven.
