Bette Davis Said

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

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

An affair now and then is good for a marriage. It adds spice, stops it from getting boring... I ought to know.
Bette Davis

Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.
Bette Davis

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.
Bette Davis

Brought up to respect the conventions, love had to end in marriage. I'm afraid it did.
Bette Davis

Everybody has a heart. Except some people.
Bette Davis

From the moment I was six I felt sexy. And let me tell you it was hell, sheer hell, waiting to do something about it.
Bette Davis

Gay Liberation? I ain't against it, it's just that there's nothing in it for me.
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

Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism.
Bette Davis

I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple devoured has seeds. It is endless.
Bette Davis

I am just too much.
Bette Davis

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.
Bette Davis

I don't take the movies seriously, and anyone who does is in for a headache.
Bette Davis

I don't think of myself as a character actress - that's become a phrase which means you've had it.
Bette Davis

I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don't remember ever having seen one weep.
Bette Davis

I never did pal around with actresses. Their talk usually bored me to tears.
Bette Davis

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

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

I sent my flowers across the hall to Mrs Nixon but her husband remembered what a Democrat I am and sent them back.
Bette Davis

I survived because I was tougher than anybody else.
Bette Davis

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.
Bette Davis

I was the Marlon Brando of my generation.
Bette Davis

I went back to work because someone had to pay for the groceries.
Bette Davis

I will never be below the title.
Bette Davis

I will not retire while I've still got my legs and my make-up box.
Bette Davis

I work to stay alive.
Bette Davis

I'd luv to kiss ya, but I just washed my hair.
Bette Davis

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.
Bette Davis

I'm the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.
Bette Davis

I've always liked men better than women.
Bette Davis

I've lost my faith in science.
Bette Davis

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

In this business, until you're known as a monster you're not a star.
Bette Davis

In this rat-race everybody's guilty till proved innocent!
Bette Davis

It is my last wish to be burried sitting up.
Bette Davis

Life is a jest; and all things show it. I thought so once; but now I know it.
Bette Davis

Locations are all tough, all miserable. I never left the sound stage for 18 years at Warners. We never went outside the studio, not even for big scenes.
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

Men become much more attractive when they start looking older. But it doesn't do much for women, though we do have an advantage: make-up.
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

Oh, don't let's ask for the moon. We've already got the stars.
Bette Davis

Old age is no place for sissies.
Bette Davis

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

Psychoanalysis. Almost went three times - almost. Then I decided what was peculiar about me was probably what made me successful. I've seen some very talented actors go into analysis and really lose it.
Bette Davis

Sex is God's joke on human beings.
Bette Davis

Strong women only marry weak men.
Bette Davis

That's me: an old kazoo with some sparklers.
Bette Davis

The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
Bette Davis

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

The only reason anyone goes to Broadway is because they can't get work in the movies.
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

This has always been a motto of mine: Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.
Bette Davis

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.
Bette Davis

To look back is to relax one's vigil.
Bette Davis

Today everyone is a star - they're all billed as 'starring' or 'also starring'. In my day, we earned that recognition.
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

When a man gives his opinion he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion she's a bitch.
Bette Davis

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.
Bette Davis

With the newspaper strike on, I wouldn't consider dying.
Bette Davis

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