Bette Midler Quotes

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

One of my first role models was Eugene Lang, a wealthy businessman who went back to his elementary school in East Harlem and addressed the sixth-grade class. He looked out at that sea of faces and said, "If any of you wants to go to college, I will pay for it." When I read that, I burst into tears. It was so generous and so basic. Not fluffy. I can't understand why we scrimp on education and shortchange our kids. Why would the citizenry do that to the people who are going to inherit its republic?

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

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

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.

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

I come from an overly confident place. But I'm overconfident because of feelings of inferiority.

Some say love it is a river that drowns the tender reeds. Some say love, it is a razor that leaves your heart to bleed. Some say love, it is a hunger, an endless aching need. I say love, it is a flower and you, its only seed.

Sometimes, when I wake up, my soul is in another city!

While I was growing up, I believed I could do anything I could think of. So the challenge was always to keep thinking - to get to where I wanted to be and then to think of somewhere else to go.

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

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

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

The first time I saw a picture of [fabled actress] Ethel Barrymore - she was on Broadway and she was wearing pearls. I thought, "That's who I should grow up to be." It's odd, because it was her physical image that I wanted; I had no idea what it was like actually to be her. In those days, we weren't bombarded by images the way we are now, and the ones we did have were more vivid in people's minds.

When the movies first started, audiences were dumbstruck to see actresses walking around in evening gowns. They'd never seen anything like that. They wanted to be like those actors and actresses, so the movies informed their behavior. A lot of people started drinking martinis and smoking cigarettes because they felt it was cool.

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.'

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.

I decided years ago not to read stories about myself anymore. Each one is a potential minefield: Whatever it says, you're bound to take it the wrong way. Why do it if you know it's going to make you miserable?

I'm looking for something that gives me a chance to stretch. Because I have my own work, and I can do anything I want in my own work - juggle, tap dance, anything I want.

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.

It is true that in this culture, they throw you out when you get older. I see it all the time, especially in my business. At my age, you're playing somebody's mother - and there aren't even a lot of those roles!

Just because people don't meet you doesn't mean they're not out there breaking their asses trying to get around.

Culturally, it's very hard to change people's attitudes about public space.

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.

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

You have to be alert. When my daughter, Sophie, came out of the womb, she was instantly alert, as if she had been here before. And she was a little disappointed that she was here again.

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

As you age, feelings do diminish.

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

Most people are walking around the city like corpses; they aren't alive enough to notice the trash. They come from other places and they see it as a big garbage dump. Do you want to live and work in a garbage dump? I don't. That's partly because I grew up in the most pristine environment possible - Hawaii, where it is sacrilege to leave your garbage on the ground.

Even if the whole human race dies off because we keep fighting and killing each other and being heartless, the planet will take care of itself. Eventually, after millions of years, it will cleanse itself, and new life forms, maybe better ones, will come. Meanwhile, we'll have gotten exactly what we deserved: annihilation.

My parents used to park us kids at the public library in downtown Honolulu every Saturday. They'd leave us there at 8 A.M. and pick us up at 4 P.M. - so between those hours, you'd better find something to do! I sat upstairs in the picture room and went through opera, ballet, and theater books. I loved the photographs of people wearing elaborate makeup and costumes - they really pulled at me inside. I was in that library every week for years, until I was about 13. I had a rich interior life, because I didn't have much of a social life.

A person's life is a journey, a road. Sometimes you go off the road and sometimes you stay on all the way through. But you are the only one on that road. It's your road.

When I finally did stop and look at my life, I realized that I had done what I'd set out to do. In my pitiful little way, I had climbed the mountain I had chosen. And there I was, on top.

Men's brains are smaller than those of women so they can fit into their penises.

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 firmly believe that with the right footwear one can rule the world.

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

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

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.

We are all part of the ecosystem.

That's why I'm concerned about education, because it helps our children see other worlds. Education is my next big thing. When music and art were taken out of the schools, I went berserk!

Enough about me. What do you think about me?

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.

I want to have fun, and I want to give people a good laugh.

Most people don't deserve to be spoken of in the same breath as Chaplin or Lucille Ball.

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

You can't just have a clean public space - you also have to have people willing to use it, and something that will draw them in.