Bette Midler Quotes

I always look old when I work because I get so upset and tense that my face wrinkles up like a prune, I can't stop it.

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

Hawaii doesn't smell like sex to me. It's the only place in the world that smells like that, but it's not sex, it's - freedom.

If someone were to say seriously, "I'm divine," she'd have to be locked up. There are lots of people in mental institutions going around saying "I'm God." But because I'm funny about it, they haven't locked me up yet. And I don't give myself airs, either.

Marriage is such hard work. And it's full of rage and real human drama.

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.

I have my standards. They're low, but I have them.

I read a comment that made me think I should stop singing for a while. And I didn't want to stop singing, because it was the only thing I loved. At first I thought, "Maybe I'll get better and eventually please the person who wrote about my singing." But then I thought, "I probably will never please this person. I should just do what pleases me."

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

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.

Sold my soul. Bought these devil chains.

I fear for the future of the planet. But in a funny way, I'm even sanguine about that.

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 have a ball - and it keeps my heart rate up. I get to wear fabulous clothes. I get to make people laugh. That's my core business, and that's where I'll always return.

Self-esteem is something you have to earn! The only way to achieve self-esteem is to work hard. People have an obligation to live up to their potential.

Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are doing pretty well at getting noticed - a lot of people are doing pretty well at it. But you wonder whether they'll last, because many of them don't have the ability to get an audience to love them. You say, "That's a fabulous body" or "I like that song"; you don't say, "I love them because I know them." You can't know them.

For some people, a park is the only place in their entire world where they can see something beautiful.

My whole life had been spent waiting for an epiphany, a manifestation of God's presence, the kind of transcendent, magical experience that lets you see your place in the big picture. And that is what I had with my first [compost] heap.

Sometimes my brain goes on CD shuffle. You know, you put a bunch of CD's on and hit play and random things come out.

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.

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

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

People have an obligation to live up to their potential.

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.