Bette Davis Quotes | GloryQuotes

Bette Davis Quotes About Work

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

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

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

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.

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.

I work to stay alive.

Bette Davis Quotes About Life

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

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

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

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

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

More Quotes by Bette Davis

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

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

When a man gives his opinion he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion she's a bitch.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone-but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

I've always liked men better than women.

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

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

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

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

Everybody has a heart. Except some people.

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.

I survived because I was tougher than anybody else.

Sex is God's joke on human beings.

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

It is my last wish to be burried sitting up.

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

I'm the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.

I was the Marlon Brando of my generation.

Strong women only marry weak men.

I've lost my faith in science.

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

Old age is no place for sissies.

Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it's because I'm not a bitch. Maybe that's why Miss Crawford always plays ladies.

To look back is to relax one's vigil.

I will never be below the title.

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

I am just too much.

Browse 62 quotes attributed to Bette Davis, listed in the source data as a American Actress, organized around themes such as Work, Life, Women. Use the topic links to explore similar quotes, or browse the full author collection in one place.