Bette Davis Quotes

It's better to be hated for who you are, than to be loved for someone you're not. It's a sign of your worth sometimes, if you're hated by the right people.

You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good . . . Joan Crawford is dead. Good.

There comes a time in every woman's life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.

Getting old is not for sissies.

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.

You will never be happier than you expect. To change your happiness, change your expectation.

If everyone likes you, you're not doing it right.

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

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

My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.

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

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 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.

There may be a heaven, but if Joan Crawford is there, I'm not going.

It's true we don't know what we've got until its gone, but we don't know what we've been missing until it arrives. Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.

Being called very, very difficult is the beginning of success. Until you're called very, very difficult you're really nobody at all.

You should know me well enough by now to know I don't ask for things I don't think I can get.

I want to die with my high heels on, still in action.

Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.

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.

Life is the past, the present and the perhaps.

I am a woman meant for a man, but I never found a man who could compete.

If everybody likes you, you're pretty dull.

One begins to realize that one is getting old when the birthday candles weigh more than the cake.

I have been uncompromising, peppery, intractable, monomaniacal, tactless, volatile, and oftentimes disagreeable... I suppose I'm larger than life.

Old age is no place for sissies.

I have eyes like a bullfrog, a neck like an ostrich and long, limp hair. You just have to be good to survive with that equipment.

Don't you hate people who drink white wine? I mean, my dear, every alcoholic in town is getting falling-down drunk on white wine. They think they aren't drunks because they only drink wine. Never, never trust anyone who asks for white wine. It means they're phonies.

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

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

Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.

You know what I'm going to have on my gravestone? 'She did it the hard way.'

One can make more enemies as a female with a brain, I think.

May each of my grandsons know, at an early age, what his life's ambition is -- and may he be successful in his pursuit of that goal.

I wouldn't piss on Joan Crawford if she were on fire.

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

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

Once the love bug wears off, as it inevitably does, you are shocked to discover that you really didn't know the object of your affections at all. We know this to be so, even as we repeat the same mistake over and over and over.

It's a rare man who can stand being around an intelligent woman, let alone married to her.

I'm the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.

You know what nostalgia is, don't you? It's basically a matter of recalling the fun without reliving the pain.

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.

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.

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

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

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

The secret of marriage is: separate bedrooms and separate bathrooms.

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.

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.