Bette Midler Quotations

If sex is such a natural phenomenon, how come there are so many books on how to do it?

When it's three o'clock in New York, it's still 1938 in London.

I learned to accept the audience's happiness for me, which is one of the hardest things for me to learn.

I bear no grudges. I have a mind that retains nothing.

Group conformity scares the pants off me because it's so often a prelude to cruelty towards anyone who doesn't want to - or can't - join the Big Parade.

If I could be granted a wish, I'd shine in your eye like a jewel.

Cherish forever what makes you unique, 'cuz you're really a yawn if it goes.

I married a German. Every night I dress up as Poland and he invades me.

After thirty, a body has a mind of its own.

Education is my next big thing. When music and art were taken out of the schools, I went berserk!

I try not to drink too much because when I'm drunk, I bite.

The worst part of success is to try finding someone who is happy for you.

I celebrate everyone's religious holidays. if it's good enough for the righteous, it's good enough for the self-righteous, I always say.

A lot of people have no access to beauty. When I was growing up, my mother had only a few pretty things to look at.

I made a pact with myself a long time ago: Never watch anything stupider than you. It's helped me a lot.

I wouldn't say I invented tacky, but I definitely brought it to its present high popularity.

I sometimes think I should go back to school to learn French and music, but who would have me?

I'd make a wonderful Lady Macbeth. I'll wear a pair of platform shoes or something.

Writing a book is not as tough as it is to haul thirty-five people around the country and sweat like a horse five nights a week.

I always try to balance the light with the heavy - a few tears of human spirit in with the sequins and the fringes.

I hope to keep entertaining in some way until I can't physically entertain any longer. It's what I was born to do, and I love this profession.

I feel like a million tonight - but one at a time.

My husband calls it winging it - the way I just took what the studios gave me, didn't do my homework and avoided roles that would risk my image.

Through books and photographs, I saw a world that was not my own - and I realized that there was another world. That's why I'm concerned about education, because it helps our children see other worlds.

I got so far away from what they told you in acting class: Do something different. Producers kept offering me the 'Sister Act' movie, but I said, 'My fans don't want to see me in a wimple.' I literally said, 'My fans don't want to see me in a wimple.'

I had a hard-scrabble childhood with my parents. I have a lot of baggage. To come down to the footlights and accept the audience's affection inside a Broadway theater - that didn't come easily to me.

I never know how much of what I say is true.

Rap is poetry set to music. But to me it's like a jackhammer.

My idea of superwoman is someone who scrubs her own floors.

I already have a Tony for my Broadway concert in '73. It's one of the most precious things I've won.

I mean, can I really create a full, three-dimensional character? I don't know anymore. I'm certainly going to try.

As an actor, you're supposed to take jobs that will challenge you or force fans to see you in a different light. By the '90s, I wasn't really an actor anymore. I was someone who went on the road with these gigantic concerts.

When I moved to New York City in 1965, I wanted to be in theater. I was following my Ethel Barrymore dream. But I was too young to be Ethel.

I'd never done a straight play before, never, and it was very hard work - really, really hard work. It was dense, really wordy, and I was determined to learn every word of it - not just skip over bits and pieces.

I had no idea of being a star, all I knew was that I wanted to be a great actress, I wanted to work as an actress. So I thought the way I would be a great actress was to sing and dance first. Lay a foundation - get my foot in the door, and then undoubtedly, of course, I would be offered great roles as soon as I grew up enough to handle them.

The Internet has changed everything. People will be discovered online. People buy music online. It's a completely different way to get entertainment.

I think the essence of humor has not changed. It's all about surprise, facilitating follows. But the context of humor has changed. Previously, the jokes were more related to current issues, political. Today people make about each other either funny or about people like Kim Kardashian. It's brutal. Everything is so much vielschmutziger.

My parents have not insisted that we go to college, but she wanted us to learn. Teacher, librarian, secretary, nurse. All my siblings were employed. But I wanted to be the boss, an independent contractor.

My parents taught me: Do not rely on a man. Not rely on it that you get married and it pays for you. That's what I figured. I have always paid my own bills.

I would much rather watch myself than listen to myself. The moving is second nature, but the listening... that's the art.

If you're frightened, you're out of luck.

If they [at the audition] don't like the way you sound they won't buy you anyway, ripped dress or no ripped dress, ass hanging out or no ass hanging out.

When you have a steady job you're more inspired to broaden yourself.

What I have in me... it's not hard, and it's not cold, and it's not fierce ambition, that's not what it is. It's a drive [for success], but it's not a drive...it's being driven, it's something I have no control over. It's something pushing me, I'm not pushing myself.

Music is probably the only place I get energy from. Music and maybe watching a really tremendous performer, watching a terrific performer like Jagger or watching a great movie.

I always wanted to be a performer, I didn't know exactly what kind of performer, all I knew was there were certain things that I liked. I liked movies a whole lot, and I loved music.

The old forms of entertainment are not extinct. Live performances are the pinnacle. If you can something that people want to see live, then you have a great career.

I read neither good nor bad about me. I let it not even in my life, so it has no effect on me. I am very sensitive.

Life is like cooking your masterpiece recipe. You have to get the right ingredients,have the right mixture and the right cooking time to reveal the PERFECT and DELICIOUS TASTE of your craft.

Some say love, it is a razor that leaves your soul to bleed.

I tried to charm the pants off Bob Dylan, but everyone will be disappointed to learn that I was unsuccessful. I got close - a couple of fast feels in the front seat of a Cadillac.

Twenty-seven people sang 'Wind Beneath My Wings' before I got around to it. A lot of people saw the movie that I sang it in, Beaches, and what they came away with was that song. They turned to their loved ones and said, 'You know, you are the wind beneath my wings!' The song expressed how they felt in a way a simple 'I love you' would not have.

From a distance the world looks blue and green, and the snow-capped mountains white. From a distance the ocean meets the stream, and the eagle takes to flight. From a distance, there is harmony, and it echoes through the land. It's the voice of hope, it's the voice of peace, it's the voice of every man

Do I understand this right? I'm being marked down?

I've always said we got married because there was nothing on TV.

Find your Light; They can't love you if they can't see you

All these rumors about [Tom Cruise] being gay. I don't believe it. I don't believe it for one minute. He hasn't been to one of my shows.

Sold my soul. Bought these devil chains.

The only thing Madonna will ever do like a virgin is give birth in a stable.

Me, I'm just a hack. I'm just a schlep-per. I just do what I can do.

Melbourne is the kind of town that really makes you consider the question 'Is there life after death?

The inventor of the modern foundation garment that we women wear today was a German scientist and opera lover by the name of Otto Titsling.

I sold my soul to rock and roll.

It's the one who won't be taken that cannot seem to give, and the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live.

I can get plenty of men, keeping them is the hard part.

Self-esteem is something you have to earn!

People have an obligation to live up to their potential.

I wish America would spend even half as much time complaining about plastics in our oceans as we do about actresses' plastic surgery.

It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance. It is the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance.

If I don't feel right about what I'm in, I don't feel right about anything.

[On Helen Reddy:] She ought to be arrested for loitering in front of an orchestra.

You have to think you're the greatest thing since sliced bread, but you have to know that you're not.

Here I am, one of the most colorful women of my time - if not of my block - being made to sound positively legumelike in printed interviews.

Enough about me. What do you think about me?

The [film] business is run by men, and they're basically interested in their own species, and they're not so interested in women belonging to the human race.

[On Princess Anne:] Such an active, outdoorsy lass. She loves nature in spite of what it did to her.

The [film] industry is an ecosystem that's sick.

There's a kind of emotional exploration you plumb with a friend that you don't really do with your family.

I love nature, in spite of what it did to me.

before one actually visits them, everyone tends to think of their favorite countries as one grand Disneyland filled with national monuments and historical treasures conveniently laid out for easy viewing, when what they really are filled with, of course, is people going to work, laundromats and places to buy rat poison.

For days on end, I would hardly speak, and when I did only the vilest sort of gibberish would spout forth. I became morose and fat. Unapproachable, except when eating - and then only by waiters.

GOD is watching us, from a Distance...

Thank God for the gays. I don't know what would have happened but I know what did happen. Good for them and good for me.

I'm so glad to be back in New York. Los Angeles can be so cold, so cruel after you've been-what's the word?-oh yes: 'fired.'

It's the Point of Your View that Decides What You See - / One Man's Flop Is Another Man's Hit. / From Manners to Movies, the Picture Keeps Changing / Depending Upon Where You Sit.

I believe that Judy Garland's artistry was so fine. I mean, when people say: 'oh, she brought so much of her life to her music', I don't really believe that. I believe that she didn't have to. She just was a moving human being. That was her gift.

Make sure your life is a rare entertainment! It doesn't take anything drastic. You needn't be gorgeous or wealthy or smart, just very enthusiastic!

If somebody makes me laugh, I’m his slave for life.

I was brought up on rock-'n'-roll. It was sort of funny because I couldn't get interested in anything else - I tried and tried but I couldn't get into science...or mathematics, I just cut myself off from anything else there was to get interested in.

The outside world doesn't have a lot to offer. You have to make your own heaven in your own home.

I'm working my way toward divinity.

If you're passionate about something, then you should pick up your flag and run with it.

Total contentment is only for cows.

I want it all - and I would like it delivered.

Honey, I can smell the scent of another woman from 500 paces.

Only two groups of people intimidate me absolutely: salespeople and the French.

There comes a time whenyou haveto let yourclothesgo out in the world and try to make it on their own.

I'm the last of the truly tacky women. I do trash with flash and sleaze with ease.

Sometimes you have to make your own opportunities and that's why I'm on TV. I wasn't going to sit around anymore, waiting patiently for the damn phone to ring. I had to create my own place- I've always done that.

The worst part of success is to try to find someone who is happy for you.