Sandra Bernhard Quotes

I'm studying Kabbalah, which is really the essence of Jewish spirituality.

When you're constantly looking for things from other people, you're not looking within yourself.

My father was a proctologist and my mother was an abstract artist, so that's how I view the world.

Love is the only shocking act left on the face of the earth.

Everybody has their own way of tapping into their realness.

I really, really love Hilary Clinton. I think she's very cool. She's out there and she's involved.

... coming to a place like Nashville, which is just music music music, it's always been such an influence on me. And there are so many interesting songwriters out there, and it's such a crazy business and so many people are trying to do it, and it's all right there in Nashville.

That disturbs people when they know they didn't have the guts or integrity to stick to their dreams.

I was looking for something within Judaism that had a spiritual nature and not just a religious nature. So my trainer at the time was the one who took me to the Kabbalah center on my 40th birthday. I was like, "Oh, this is so cool." I was just ready for it. I was ready for something different.

When you're watching the news, how many days in a row can you watch that and feel good about yourself and the world?

I don't believe in karma.

At no time do I come from a cynical point of view. I'm coming from a concerned point of view.

I really have a problem with any kind of drug, I always have.

There are so few women in general who aren't completely threatened and confused by other women's success. It's very disappointing.

Anything that has cynicism to it and that's jaded is smutty.

Madonnas got one big choice. Take a couple of years off and become a human being.

I don't like surgery. I don't like elective surgery, I don't like surgery that you have to have.

There are few performers who would have had the audacity to even bring up the fact that they had been poorly reviewed.

I knew I wanted to be a performer and do comedy at 5 years old. My dad's wife, Marlene Rosenbaum, was boiling water and she goes, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I said, "A comedian." And she laughed and laughed because she thought that was the cutest, funniest thing.

I've always been opposed to groups. I can't believe the doctrine of group is going to work for every single person within the group.

Not everybody is cookie-cutter. You just can't be. There are too many variables in life.

I think people are a little bit intimidated by me. You know, I'm not exactly a wilting flower, so I think they're a little bit scared of me sometimes.

I think everybody is covering their [posteriors] with the Enron scandal and it was very convenient that Sept. 11 came along to deflect the fact that they should never have been in the White House in the first place. What happened in the election was completely corrupt.

I don't need to be redundant to the gay community about what's wrong and what isn't happening for them.

The real terrorist threats are George W. Bush and his band of brown-shirted thugs.

I've become this sort of icon for the gay community. I don't like the position.

I'm trying to appeal to the disenfranchised everybody, not just specifically gay.

Of course, everybody's family is dysfunctional - we've accepted that. What are we supposed to do? Hate our parents for the rest of our lives?

People want to be famous, they want to be loved, they want to be accepted. They want to push aside their past and the things that have been embarrassing to them.

I think I've drawn from some of the most feminine women, like Jackie Kennedy. I am totally devastated that she's gone. She had it all.

I'm very much a humanist. I'm very much pro-choice. I'm very much politically correct.

Gayness is a non-issue.

When people pay to see you live, they connect with you on a much deeper level than people who just buy your records.

I really thought I wanted to be a musical-comedy star, but I lived in Phoenix and didn't want to go all the way to New York and be that far away from home. So I thought maybe I'd be a rock 'n' roll singer or an opera singer.

You have to take the basics of feminism and the kind of outline of it and do what you do with it. You have to make things work for your own life.

People feel like if they don't have a voice or a name or the spotlight, then they're invisible. But if you can't wake up in your world, in your life, with your family and your friends, and enjoy it, then forget it. All bets are off, because that's all anybody is guaranteed.

Random things make me laugh.

If you come home to a household of chaos and anger and fear, you're not going to feel protected from the world.

Purim, one of my favorite holidays. It's like the original drag queen's holiday. It's when all the Jewish men go for it and feel no guilt for a change.

I think bravery is when you're willing to really put yourself on the line and maybe lose out, financially - and be able to say exactly what motivates you and what inspires you and what you find completely unacceptable in humanity and in culture.

When I was really little, I was skinny and people laughed at me for being skinny, so, we all pay our dues for the bodies we're in one way or another. But thank god I haven't needed to alter it to feel good about myself.

Maybe I'd be in a different place in my career if I'd had that 10-year plan, a lot of people went at it with this voracity that I never had. My only voracity was to have fun and to be in the mix.

I feel like you've gotta be able to get up every night in front of a live audience. Whether it's 10 people or 50 people or a hundred people, whether you're in a rock band or doing the comedy circuit.

I don't think somebody can just, like, wave a magic wand and make you a star.

I think so much of what informs us as performers is what we had to endure as kids growing up. I was the youngest in my family. I always got a lot of attention.

I've always allowed myself to go on journeys creatively and emotionally, and never put, like, limits on myself.

The most important, overriding arc of my career has been that I would never be self-deprecating.

I would never wanna do a show that's strictly maudlin and invaded my personal life and my home. I would never do that.

I always have kind of underneath feeling of peace of mind that I get from just the basic tenants of spirituality.

I am still comfortable with my body, because I'm like, What's not to be comfortable with? I mean, it's just my nature.