Best Bette Davis Quotes & Sayings

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

The word "slut" has been invoked in the public discourse as an ugly slur. But Langella's book celebrates sluttiness as a worthy -- even noble -- way of life... When Bette Davis wants to have "racy phone conversations...rife with foreplay," he agrees because how could you not? When Elizabeth Taylor says, "Come on up, baby, and put me to sleep," who is he to resist? (He does make her chase him first.) By his cheerful debauchery, Langella reveals something certain ommmentators have obscured: sluts are the best---hungry for experience and generous wih themselves in its pursuit. — Ada Calhoun

As a female I think it's a terrible hindrance in business. I think it's a terrible hindrance for any female to have a lot of intelligence in private life, but I think in business sometimes it's even worse because there's deep resentment. — Bette Davis

If everybody likes you, you're pretty dull. — 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

There's only one way to work
like hell. — Bette Davis

I never wished I'd been a man. I always felt like a woman and wanted to be a woman. I wanted to be fulfilled professionally and personally, as a woman. There are some who might say I had penis envy, but I only had penis admiration. — Bette Davis

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. — Bette Davis

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

The only way you can become a legend is in your coffin — Bette Davis

I don't think I have the image that say, Judy Garland has, or Bette Davis. — Julie Andrews

Old age ain't for sissies — 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 casting couch? There's only one of us who ever made it to stardom without it, and that was Bette Davis. — Claudette Colbert

Bette Davis taught Hollywood to follow an actress instead of the actress following the camera, and she's probably the best movie actress there's ever been. — Elaine Stritch

A sure way to lose happiness, I found, is to want it at the expense of everything else. — 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 always felt that Bette Davis was one of the great screen actresses who never really got her due - she won two Oscars, but the last was in 1938, and that was really before all the great work that she did. — Robert Osborne

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

If Hollywood didn't work out, I was prepared to be the best secretary in the world. — Bette Davis

I firmly believe, however, that if your children have never hated you, you have failed as a parent. — Bette Davis

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

Without discipline and detachment, an actor is an emotional slob, spilling his insides out. This abandonment is having an unfortunate vogue. It is tasteless, formless, absurd. Without containment there is no art. All this vomiting and wheezing and bursting at the seams is no more great acting than the convulsions of raving maniacs. — Bette Davis

When asked what it takes to succeed in the acting profession, Bette Davis would answer, "the courage to be hated." — Frank Langella

If you want a thing done well, get a couple of old broads to do it. — Bette Davis

You can lose everything
but you can't lose your talent! — Bette Davis

Evil people you never forget them. And that's the aim of any actress-never to be forgotten. — Bette Davis

It was Ernie Haller, who had photographed Bette Davis in Jezebel and Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind, who was solely responsible for the visuals in Mildred Pierce, said Crawford. "Ernie was at the rehearsals. And so was Mr. [Anton] de Grot, who did the sets. I recall seeing Ernie's copy of the script and it was filled with notations and diagrams. I asked him if these were for special lights and he said, 'No, they're for special shadows.' Now, that threw me. I was a little apprehensive. I was used to the look of Metro, where everything, including the war pictures, was filmed in blazing white lights. Even if a person was dying there was no darkness. But when I saw the rushes of Mildred Pierce I realized what Ernie was doing. The shadows and half-lights, the way the sets were lit, together with the unusual angles of the camera, added considerably to the psychology of my character and to the mood and psychology of the film. And that, my dear, is film noir." "Mildred — Shaun Considine

I may not have been wearing a mink coat, but I was traveling with a dog. That should have made you think I was an actress! — Bette Davis

We had a moment in the '40s and '50s, where female characters were very strong in film, where these incredible roles were written for women like Joan Crawford, like Bette Davis. But then there was a space of time where - I don't know why - it wasn't like that. It became difficult for women to find certain roles after a certain age. — Monica Bellucci

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

She did it the hard way. — Bette Davis

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

Beauty is subjective: Bette Davis wasn't beautiful, but she was more than beautiful. — Jacques Audiard

Two people, two hands, and two songs, in this case "Big Shot" and "Bette Davis Eyes." The lyrics of the two songs provided no commentary, honest or ironic, on the proceedings. They were merely there and always underfoot, the insistent gray muck that was pop culture. It stuck to our shoes and we tracked it through our lives. — Colson Whitehead

I will not retire while I've still got my legs and my makeup box. — Bette Davis

I could never understand the attraction of Bette Davis. I always preferred Jane Russell. — Richard Griffiths