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.
— Bette Davis
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.
The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he's dead.
Brought up to respect the conventions, love had to end in marriage. I'm afraid it did.
Gay Liberation? I ain't against it, it's just that there's nothing in it for me.
I often think that a slightly exposed shoulder emerging from a long satin nightgown packs more sex than two naked bodies in bed.
In this business, until you're known as a monster you're not a star.
Everybody has a heart. Except some people.
My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.
With the newspaper strike on, I wouldn't consider dying.
Strong women only marry weak men.
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.
I work to stay alive.
I was the Marlon Brando of my generation.
I don't think of myself as a character actress - that's become a phrase which means you've had it.
An affair now and then is good for a marriage. It adds spice, stops it from getting boring... I ought to know.
Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation.
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.
Good actors I've worked with all started out making faces in a mirror, and you keep making faces all your life.
Life is a jest; and all things show it. I thought so once; but now I know it.
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.
People often become actresses because of something they dislike about themselves: They pretend they are someone else.
In this rat-race everybody's guilty till proved innocent!
Oh, don't let's ask for the moon. We've already got the stars.
It is my last wish to be burried sitting up.
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.
Today everyone is a star - they're all billed as 'starring' or 'also starring'. In my day, we earned that recognition.
Old age is no place for sissies.
I've always liked men better than women.
I will not retire while I've still got my legs and my make-up box.
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 don't take the movies seriously, and anyone who does is in for a headache.
Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.
This has always been a motto of mine: Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.
To look back is to relax one's vigil.
A sure way to lose happiness, I found, is to want it at the expense of everything else.
I survived because I was tougher than anybody else.
I went back to work because someone had to pay for the groceries.
We movie stars all end up by ourselves. Who knows? Maybe we want to.
Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism.
That's me: an old kazoo with some sparklers.
I've lost my faith in science.
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 only reason anyone goes to Broadway is because they can't get work in the movies.
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'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 will never be below the title.
I never did pal around with actresses. Their talk usually bored me to tears.
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.
Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.
