Best quotes by Bette Davis

Yes, burn your bridges.

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

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

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.

Strong women only marry weak men.

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

Among the reasons marriages fail, sex ranks no higher than fourth, behind money, having only one bathroom, and an inability to communicate, reasons one, two and three.

I survived because I was tougher than anybody else.

Mother of three; divorcee; American. Twenty years experience as an actress in motion pictures. Mobile still and more affable than rumour would have it. Wants steady employment in Hollywood. (Has had Broadway). References upon request.

Temperament is something that is an integral part of the artist. Not temper, temperament. There is a vast difference.

You mustn't miss the moment. There's only one first sailing into Rio harbor.

Without discipline and detachment, an actor is an emotional slob, spilling his insides out. This abandonment is having an unfortunate vogue. It is tasteless, formless, absurd. Without containment there is no art. All this vomiting and wheezing and bursting at the seams is no more great acting than the convulsions of raving maniacs.

People stood on their chairs, cheering and waving. And it was all for me! Waves of love flooded the stage and washed over me. I started to cry. The sweetness of such a moment is impossible to describe. One is both lover and beloved. ... I'd found the one true, enduring romance of my life.

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

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

Everybody has a heart. Except some people.

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.

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

I guess I'm larger than life. That's my problem.

Home is where you go to when you've nowhere to go.

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

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.

The act of sex, gratifying as it may be, is God's joke on humanity. It is man's last desperate stand at superintendency.

You've got to know someone pretty well to hate them.

She's the original good time who was had by all.

Success only breeds a new goal

There is a certain ecstasy in wanting things you can't get.

It has been my experience that one cannot, in any shape or form, depend on human relations for lasting reward. It is only work that truly satisfies.

Once the love bug wears off, as it inevitably does, you are shocked to discover that you really didn't know the object of your affections at all. We know this to be so, even as we repeat the same mistake over and over and over.

I'm the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.

You can lose everything but you can't lose your talent!

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

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

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

Old age is no place for sissies.

[On gay men:] Let me say, a more artistic, appreciative group of people for the arts does not exist ... They are more knowledgeable, more loving of the arts. They make the average male look stupid.

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

Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night! - As Margo Channing in All About Eve

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

Success is built on disappointment, and disappointment is inherent in all success.

One can make more enemies as a female with a brain, I think.

Don't you hate people who drink white wine? I mean, my dear, every alcoholic in town is getting falling-down drunk on white wine. They think they aren't drunks because they only drink wine. Never, never trust anyone who asks for white wine. It means they're phonies.

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

Being called very, very difficult is the beginning of success. Until you're called very, very difficult you're really nobody at all.

There's only one way to work -- like hell.

You know what nostalgia is, don't you? It's basically a matter of recalling the fun without reliving the pain.

Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.

It's a rare man who can stand being around an intelligent woman, let alone married to her.

If everybody likes you, you are not a very interesting person.

The secret of marriage is: separate bedrooms and separate bathrooms.

Your luck is how you treat people.

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

One begins to realize that one is getting old when the birthday candles weigh more than the cake.

I am a woman meant for a man, but I never found a man who could compete.

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

I wouldn't piss on Joan Crawford if she were on fire.

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.

I have eyes like a bullfrog, a neck like an ostrich and long, limp hair. You just have to be good to survive with that equipment.

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

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

I want to die with my high heels on, still in action.

It's true we don't know what we've got until its gone, but we don't know what we've been missing until it arrives. Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.

There may be a heaven, but if Joan Crawford is there, I'm not going.

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.

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

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

Some young Hollywood starlets remind me of my grandmother's old farmhouse -- all painted up nice on the front side, a big swing on the backside, and nothing whatsoever in the attic.

Life is the past, the present and the perhaps.

If everybody likes you, you're pretty dull.

Getting old is not for sissies.

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

There comes a time in every woman's life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.

If everyone likes you, you're not doing it right.

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.