Bette Davis

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

The act of sex, gratifying as it may be, is God's joke on humanity. It is man's last desperate stand at superintendency.
Bette Davis

The real actor has a direct line to the collective heart.
Bette Davis

Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night! [As Margo Channing in All About Eve]
Bette Davis

Discipline is a symbol of caring to a child. He needs guidance. If there is love, there is no such thing as being too tough with a child. A parent must also not be afraid to hang himself. If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.
Bette Davis

The weak are the most treacherous of us all. They come to the strong and drain them. They are bottomless. They are insatiable. They are always parched and always bitter. They are everyone's concern and like vampires they suck our life's blood.
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

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

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

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

I work to stay alive.
Bette Davis

Strong women only marry weak men.
Bette Davis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was the Marlon Brando of my generation.
Bette Davis

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

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

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

I've lost my faith in science.
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

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

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

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

We movie stars all end up by ourselves. Who knows? Maybe we want to.
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

I am just too much.
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

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

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

Old age is no place for sissies.
Bette Davis

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

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