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Quotes by Bette Davis

Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.
– Bette Davis
An affair now and then is good for a marriage. It adds spice, stops it from getting boring... I ought to know.
– Bette Davis
At 50, I thought proudly: Here we are, half century! Being 60 was fairly frightening. You want to know how I spent my 70th birthday? I put on a completely black face, a fuzzy black Afro wig, wore black clothes and hung a black wreath on my door.
– Bette Davis
Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.
– Bette Davis
Brought up to respect the conventions, love had to end in marriage. I'm afraid it did.
– Bette Davis
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.
– Bette Davis
Don't get up. And please stop acting as if I were the queen mother!
– Bette Davis
Everybody has a heart. Except some people.
– Bette Davis
Evil people you never forget them. And that's the aim of any actress-never to be forgotten.
– Bette Davis
Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy night!
– Bette Davis
First time was when I was 26 and got married - and it was hell waiting.
– Bette Davis
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.
– Bette Davis
Gary [Merrill] was a macho man, but none of my husbands was ever man enough to become Mr Bette Davis.
– Bette Davis
Gay Liberation? I ain't against it, it's just that there's nothing in it for me.
– Bette Davis
Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism.
– Bette Davis
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.
– Bette Davis
I am just too much.
– Bette Davis
I didn't forget your breakfast. I didn't bring your breakfast. Because you didn't eat your din-din.
– Bette Davis
I don't take the movies seriously, and anyone who does is in for a headache.
– Bette Davis
I don't think of myself as a character actress - that's become a phrase which means you've had it.
– Bette Davis
I have been uncompromising, peppery, intractable, monomaniacal, tactless, volatile, and ofttimes disagreeable... I suppose I'm larger than life.
– Bette Davis
I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don't remember ever having seen one weep.
– Bette Davis
I must start wearing a watch. I never have you know.
– Bette Davis
I never did pal around with actresses. Their talk usually bored me to tears.
– Bette Davis
I often think that a slightly exposed shoulder emerging from a long satin nightgown packs more sex than two naked bodies in bed.
– Bette Davis
I see - she's the original good time that was had by all.
– Bette Davis
I sent my flowers across the hall to Mrs Nixon but her husband remembered what a Democrat I am and sent them back.
– Bette Davis
I think I'll have a large order of prognosis negative.
– Bette Davis
I wanted to be the first to win three Oscars, but Miss Hepburn has done it. Actually it hasn't been done. Miss Hepburn only won half an Oscar. If they'd given me half an Oscar I would have thrown it back in their faces. You see, I'm an Aries. I never lose.
– Bette Davis
I was never beautiful like Miss Hayworth or Miss Lamarr. I was known as the little brown wren. Who'd want to get me at the end of the picture?
– Bette Davis
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.
– Bette Davis
I was the Marlon Brando of my generation.
– Bette Davis
I went back to work because someone had to pay for the groceries.
– Bette Davis
I will never be below the title.
– Bette Davis
I will not retire while I've still got my legs and my make-up box.
– Bette Davis
I work to stay alive.
– Bette Davis
I wouldn't worry too much about your heart. You can always put that award where your heart ought to be.
– Bette Davis
I'd luv to kiss ya, but I just washed my hair.
– Bette Davis
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.
– Bette Davis
I'm the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.
– Bette Davis
I've always liked men better than women.
– Bette Davis
I've been lucky. I'll be lucky again.
– Bette Davis
I've lost my faith in science.
– Bette Davis
If my guests do not like it here, I suggest they accompany you to the nursery... where I am sure you will all feel more at home.
– Bette Davis
In this business, until you're known as a monster you're not a star.
– Bette Davis
In this rat-race everybody's guilty till proved innocent!
– Bette Davis
It is my last wish to be burried sitting up.
– Bette Davis
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.
– Bette Davis
Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone-but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.
– Bette Davis
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.
– Bette Davis
My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.
– Bette Davis
Oh, don't let's ask for the moon. We've already got the stars.
– Bette Davis
Old age is no place for sissies.
– Bette Davis
Peformance number 1,000, if I play it that long, will take place in a well-padded booby-hatch.
– Bette Davis
People often become actresses because of something they dislike about themselves: They pretend they are someone else.
– Bette Davis
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.
– Bette Davis
Sex is God's joke on human beings.
– Bette Davis
She is the original good time that was had by all.
– Bette Davis
Strong women only marry weak men.
– Bette Davis
That's me: an old kazoo with some sparklers.
– Bette Davis
The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
– Bette Davis
The only reason anyone goes to Broadway is because they can't get work in the movies.
– Bette Davis
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.
– Bette Davis
Three years ago i was forty... forty! Four-oh! That slipped out. Now I suddenly feel as if I've taken all my clothes off.
– Bette Davis
Today everyone is a star - they're all billed as 'starring' or 'also starring'. In my day, we earned that recognition.
– Bette Davis
Wave after wave of love flooded the stage and washed over me, the beginning of the one great durable romance of my life.
– Bette Davis
We movie stars all end up by ourselves. Who knows? Maybe we want to.
– Bette Davis
We're all busy little bees, full of stings, making honey day and night, aren't we honey?
– Bette Davis
Who gossips so much around here?
– Bette Davis
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.
– Bette Davis
With the newspaper strike on, I wouldn't consider dying.
– Bette Davis
Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation.
– Bette Davis
You can't say I didn't fall for you.
– Bette Davis
You know what I'm going to have on my gravestone? She did it the hard way.
– Bette Davis
You should know me well enough by now to know I don't ask for things I don't think I can get.
– 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.
– Bette Davis
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.
– Bette Davis
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.
– Bette Davis
To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given the chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy. As everyone else, I love to dunk my crust in it. But alone, it is not a diet designed to keep body and soul together.
– Bette Davis
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.
– Bette Davis
A sure way to lose happiness, I found, is to want it at the expense of everything else.
– Bette Davis