The Bette Midler Quote Shrine

"I think the ill-tempered and venal quality of my true self is reflected."
(BETTE MIDLER, half-joking about the semi-autobiographical character she plays on her new CBS sitcom, "Bette," to New York's Daily News)

"Basically, what I was doing was a character that has always had a place in show business, and that's the Broad. People always love a broad--someone with a sense of humor, someone with a fairly wicked tongue, someone who can belt out a song, someone who takes no guff. When I came up, there wasn't anyone like that. The last one, I'd have to say, was Sophie Tucker."

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

"I don't have any heroes. I don't lionize anyone. To my credit, I think...I know that I'm unique, and I know that I'm different and special, and I'm thrilled to death to be this person...when you have heroes like that, it tends to make you feel helpless. You think, '*uck, Jesus was 33 and he changed the whole world, and I'm 34 and I haven't done nuthin'.' If you sit around doing that all day, you're REALLY not gonna do nuthin'."

"I adore deceit and I don't mind being misquoted. I will not, however, allow myself to be made to sound boring to my countless fans who are convinced that I am, if not Jackie O., then certainly the next best thing!"

``Despite the way things turned out [AIDS], I'm still proud of those days [when I got my start singing at the gay bathhouses in New York City]. I feel like I was at the forefront of the gay liberation movement, and I hope I did my part to help it move forward. So, I kind of wear the label of `Bathhouse Betty' with pride."

"I am never very far away from my spirit., it's just a quarter of an inch below the surface of my skin. It's been very responsive to nature and to the lifeforms around me and I think that's part of having a spiritual nature.
At the end of the line you come to some sort of enlightenment and that enlightenment is, that we're all in this together and that things have to fall away from your in order for you to find where that spirit really lies within yourself."

This cause means so much to me...that I am prepared, for the pledge of a mere five thousand dollars to drop my dress for Isreal!

"I have the magic words: 'I don't care anymore!'"
"Was I a funny-looking kid? Well, yeah. I mean, I had the frizzy hair and I wore these cat's-eye glasses...no, they were NOT on a chain! Thank GOD!" (Barbra Walters: Interviews of a Lifetime)

"I didn't belong as a kid, and that always bothered me. If only I'd known that one day my differentness would be an asset, then my early life would have been much easier."

"Me, I'm just a hack. I'm just a schlepper. I just do what I can do." --Bette Midler

"[Our father] didn't like us wearing make up and we had a curfew some ridiculous hour like ten o'clock, and if you weren't in the house you usually got locked out. Us sisters were always sticking up for each other and always sneaking each other in the window at night."

"Music is the truest expression of myself," she asserts. "Working in film, you're basically at the mercy of someone else's vision. With a record, I'm the final arbiter. And I like having that kind of control. Of course, when I'm singing I'm also acting. Every song should be a scene...it should take you someplace and leave you with a feeling...but I'm attracted to the words and if the words aren't well put together, I have a hard time relating to the song. I'm an actor, even in my music, and an actor needs words."

"I've never known anyone to tell the truth about sex EVER! Have you? I have never, ever . . .I have never told the truth about sex."
(Bette Midler on Larry King Live in October 1998, discussing the Clinton/Monica/Kenn Starr fiasco)

"There's nothing in this world that is more worthy to own than compassion."

"In trying to help someone else you will find your self."

"I have my standards. They may be low, but I have them." -- Bette Midler

"I'm as confident as Cleopatra's pussy." -- Bette Midler

"Live like every day is your last, work like you don't need the money, love like you've never been hurt, and dance like nobody's watching."

"I'm pretty gutsy, but I'm intimidated by tremendous accomplishment... and by people who are very tall"

"My specialty is to make people laugh really, really hard and then turn around and make them cry. That's what I do."

"When I moved to New York, I was very disappointed in how parts of the city looked. I was so upset, I didn't sleep for weeks. I love New Yorkers, and I'm like them. I'm noisy, I have my opinions, but I'm not used to the kind of carelessness and waste that I was seeing. People were throwing their garbage out the window, leaving their lunches on the ground. Finally, I realized I needed to actually do something -- even if I had to pick up the stuff with my own two hands."

"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."
~Bette Midler

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

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

"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?""

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

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

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

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

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

"I like art and I like work. And the whole thrust of my life has been toward those two things, with romance and family and friends and all other human contact simply tributaries of what is the great stream of my life: my work."

"I LOVE the idea of being a wild woman, but I don't really want to be one. I think about the consequences. I'm not big on consequences."

"I married a saint and gave birth to an angel"

"Work is a process of finding out who you are, once you do you can lie down."

" I've always said what other people were afraid to say, and always in the shortest, tightest skirt possible."

How the album got it's name: "One morning I was alone in my beach house making coffee and I heard someone outside the door shouting 'Bathhouse Betty! Bathhouse Betty! Come Out!'
It was some drunken fan, holding the most pathetic bouquest of wilted flowers. Of course, I was frightened, but at the same time it was so funny. I thought to myself,'Well, Bette, I guess you haven't come so far after all...'"

"I love to work. I love the idea of putting a show together, and I love the idea of putting musical numbers together - and putting commentary together and character. I love that..I love it!! That's the only time I'm really alive. I never learned to relax. When I don't work, I feel half-alive."

"I think that it's a celebration - that it's an examination, on a very superficial level, of things that are bad in life. Things that are hard to deal with -- but mostly it's a celebration of the things that are wonderful in life: toe-tapping music; flinging your body about and not caring where it lands and being physically irresponsible. It's being carefree for an hour and a half and happy-go-lucky..that's my favorite phrase for it -- it's joy...it's joy! It really is!! I always forget that..I can never keep that in my head..but that is what I always try to transmit...it's corny-- so damned corny, but so....so wonderful"

"You know, I wanted to leave you with the memory of the good beneath the gaudy, the saint beneath the paint, the pure little soul that lurks beneath this lurid exterior... but then again I figured:
Fuc*'EM IF THEY CAN'T TAKE A JOKE!"

"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."

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

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