Bette Davis Quotes

50 Sourced Quotes

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. 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
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
I love my profession. I would never stop. Relax? I relax when I work. It's my life.

Bette Davis
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.

Bette Davis
I firmly believe, however, that if your children have never hated you, you have failed as a parent.

Bette Davis
Of a starlet:
There goes the famous good time that was had by all.

Bette Davis
Of Jayne Mansfield:
Dramatic art, in her opinion, is knowing how to fill a sweater.

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

Bette Davis
Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon – we have the stars.

Bette Davis
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.

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

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

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
The weak are the most treacherous of us all. They come to the strong and drain them. They are bottomless. They are insatiable. They are always parched and always bitter. They are everyone's concern and like vampires they suck our life's blood.

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

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

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
I was so uncomfortable at a party recently when the conversation droned on about women who are constantly getting married. I was on the edge of my chair, close to squirming in embarrassment because I myself was guilty of four husbands. I finally leaned forward and squeaked, 'But one died!'

Bette Davis
Almost as many inhumanities are committed in the name of love as in the name of religion.

Bette Davis
Joan always cries a lot. Her tear ducts must be very close to her bladder.

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

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

Bette Davis
The male ego, with few exceptions, is elephantine to start with.

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

Bette Davis
This became a credo of mine: Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.

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

Bette Davis
What a fool I was to come to Hollywood where they only understand platinum blondes and where legs are more important than talent.

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

Bette Davis