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 haven't left my house in days. I watch the news channels incessantly. All the news stories are about the election; all the commercials are Viagra and Cialis. Election, erection, election, erection! Either way we're screwed!

If only I'd known my differentness would be an asset, then my earlier life would have been much easier.

If you can accept your differentness and learn to love it and encourage it, then you can be someone wonderful.

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

Let the sun stop burning, Let them tell me love's not worth going through. If it all falls apart, I will know deep in my heart, The only dream that mattered had come true ...In this life I was loved by you.

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

A lot of people say that my life is wasted on me because I could be a bigger asshole than I am, but I've chosen not to be.

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

People are not the best because they work hard. They work hard because they are the best.

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

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.

I think most of us are torn. We have at least two people at war in our body. One person wants to retire and grow fabulous tomatoes, and the other wants to stand up on a pedestal and be worshipped and get bigger and bigger and bigger until she explodes.

Cats always seem so very wise, when staring with their half-closed eyes. Can they be thinking, I'll be nice, and maybe she will feed me twice?

Just remember, during the winter, far beneath the bitter snow, that there's a seed that with the sun's love in the spring becomes a rose.

[On Denmark:] ... that little country of cottage cheese and courage ...

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Total contentment is only for cows.

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

I'm working my way toward divinity.

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

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.

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

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!

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.

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'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.'

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.

GOD is watching us, from a Distance...

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

People have an obligation to live up to their potential.

Self-esteem is something you have to earn!

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

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 sold my soul to rock and roll.

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.

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

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

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

Sold my soul. Bought these devil chains.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.