Bette Davis Quotes
"I wouldn't piss on her if she was on fire." (in reference to 'Joan Crawford' )
In 1982: "Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should ALL be bigger than life."
"Getting old is not for sissies."
"I see - she's the original good time that was had by all."
"Until you're known in my profession as a monster, you're not a star."
"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."
"I went back to work because someone had to pay for the groceries."
"I'm the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived."
[On rival
Joan Crawford]: "She has slept with every male star at MGM except
Lassie."
[On her character in
All About Eve]: "Margo Channing was not a bitch. She was an actress who was getting older and was not too happy about it. And why should she? Anyone who says that life begins at 40 is full of it. As people get older their bodies begin to decay. They get sick. They forget things. What's good about that?"
"Gay Liberation? I ain't against it, it's just that there's nothing in it for me."
"Success only breeds a new goal."
"What a fool I was to come to Hollywood where they only understand platinum blondes and where legs are more important than talent."
"I have never known the great actor who... didn't plan eventually to direct or produce. If he has no such dream, he is usually bitter, ungratified and eventually alcoholic."
"There was more good acting at Hollywood parties than ever appeared on the screen."
"I would advise any woman against having an affair with a married man believing he will ever leave his wife, no matter how often he says his wife does not understand him. Love is not as necessary to a man's happiness as it is to a woman's. If her marriage is satisfactory, a woman will seldom stray. A man can be totally contented and still be out howling at the moon."
"The male ego, with few exceptions, is elephantine to start with."
"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'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."
"An affair now and then is good for a marriage. It adds spice, stops it from getting boring. I ought to know."
"Of course I replaced my father. I became my own father and everyone else's." - in reference to her parents' divorce when she was 7
"I will never be below the title."
"If you want a thing well done, get a couple of old broads to do it."
"Today everyone is a star - they're all billed as 'starring' or 'also starring'. In my day, we earned that recognition."
[in reference to
Katharine Hepburn's tie for the 1968 Oscar with
Barbra Streisand]: "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."
[referring to her fourth husband,
Gary Merrill]: "Gary was a macho man, but none of my husbands was ever man enough to become Mr. Bette Davis."
At one time, the actress, who won Oscars for
Dangerous and
Jezebel had quite a reputation for being difficult - "At one time?!" she erupts. "I've been known as difficult for 50 years, practically! What do you mean 'at one time'?! Nooo, I've been like this for 50 years. And it's always always to make it the best film I can make it!"
"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."
[when told not to speak ill of the dead] 'Just because someone is dead does not mean they have changed!'
[on sex] "God's biggest joke on human beings."
"You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good...
Joan Crawford is dead, good!" - on the death of her long-time nemesis.
"I had to be the monster for both of us." (commenting about her mother, an aspiring actress)
"If Hollywood didn't work out, I was prepared to be the best secretary in the world."
"I have been uncompromising, peppery, infractable, monomaniacal, tactless, volatile and offtimes disagreeable. I suppose I'm larger than life."
"Joan and I have never been warm friends. We are not simpatico. I admire her, and yet I feel uncomfortable with her. To me, she is the personification of the Movie Star. I have always felt her greatest performance is Crawford being Crawford."
[After having blown the same line several times in
Hollywood Canteen, in which she plays herself]: "I don't know what's wrong with me, but I think I just can't play myself. I don't know how! But, if you give me a drink - give me a cigarette - give me a gun - I'll play any old bag you want me to. I just can't play myself!"
Beyond the Forest was a terrible movie! It had the longest death scene ever seen on the screen.
"I was a person who couldn't make divorce work. For me, there's nothing lonelier than a turned-down toilet seat."
"I want to die with my high heels on, still in action." (Before taking her final flight in 1989)
"I always had the will to win. I felt it baking cookies. They had to be the best cookies anyone baked."
"When I die, they'll probably auction off my false eyelashes."
