Bette Davis

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

Sex is God's joke on human beings.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Everybody has a heart. Except some people.

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

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

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

I've always liked men better than women.

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

Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.

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.

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

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

I work to stay alive.

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

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

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 am just too much.

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

I survived because I was tougher than anybody else.

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

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

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

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.

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

I'm the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.

I will never be below the title.

To look back is to relax one's vigil.

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

I've lost my faith in science.

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

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

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

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

It is my last wish to be burried sitting up.

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

Old age is no place for sissies.

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.

This has always been a motto of mine: Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.

Strong women only marry weak men.

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.

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

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

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.

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

I was the Marlon Brando of my generation.

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

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

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

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

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