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
'In the beginning was the Word,' and you must not be tempted with a script just because you have a great part. You want a great role to play, but the whole - the whole - must be good. It'll never succeed if it's just the role you like.

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

Bette Davis
The man, my dear, is never going to make a marriage work. If it works, the woman does it.

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

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

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

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

Bette Davis
Of a a starlet:
I see – she's the original good time that was had by all.

Bette Davis
The person who wants to make it has to sweat. There are no short cuts. And you've got to have the guts to be hated. That's the hardest part.

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

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
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
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.

Bette Davis
The real actor–like any real artist—has a direct line to the collective heart.

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

Bette Davis
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.

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

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

Bette Davis