I`d marry again if I found a man who had fifteen million dollars, would sign over half to me, and guarantee that he`d be dead within a year.

Old age is no place for sissies.

I will not retire while I`ve still got my legs and my make-up box.

I`ve been lucky. I`ll be lucky again.

Old age is no place for sissies.

I`d luv to kiss ya, but I just washed my hair.

I don`t take the movies seriously, and anyone who does is in for a headache.

Brought up to respect the conventions, love had to end in marriage. I`m afraid it did.

[on Claude Rains] My favorite person to work with was Claude Rains.

[referring to her fourth husband, Gary Merrill]: "Gary was a macho man, but none of my husbands was ever man enough to become Mr. Bette Davis."

I had to be the monster for both of us. (commenting about her mother, an aspiring actress)

If Hollywood didn`t work out, I was prepared to be the best secretary in the world.

It has been my experience that one cannot, in any shape or form, depend on human relations for lasting reward. It is only work that truly satisfies.

[Joan Crawford] and I have never been warm friends. We are not simpatico. I admire her, and yet I feel uncomfortable with her. To me, she is the personification of the Movie Star. I have always felt her greatest performance is Crawford being Crawford.

When I die, they`ll probably auction off my false eyelashes.

[In 1982] "Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should ALL be bigger than life."

Beyond the Forest (1949) was a terrible movie! It had the longest death scene ever seen on the screen.

[on director Lindsay Anderson] I think he`s a very talented man, but I think he`s a difficult man to work with. He really prefers theater and not film, and that`s a little depressing, I must say.

Until you`re known in my profession as a monster, you`re not a star.

Gay Liberation? I ain`t against it, it`s just that there`s nothing in it for me.

I have been uncompromising, peppery, infractable, monomaniacal, tactless, volatile and offtimes disagreeable. I suppose I`m larger than life.

I was a person who couldn`t make divorce work. For me, there`s nothing lonelier than a turned-down toilet seat.

I will never be below the title.

Success only breeds a new goal.

There are new words now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains. the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch.

At 50, I thought proudly, `Here we are, half century!` Being 60 was fairly frightening. You want to know how I spent my 70th birthday? I put on a completely black face, a fuzzy black afro wig, wore black clothes, and hung a black wreath on my door.

I want to die with my high heels on, still in action. [Before taking her final flight in 1989]

This became a credo of mine...attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.

To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given the chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy. As everyone else, I love to dunk my crust in it. But alone, it is not a diet designed to keep body and soul together.

[After having blown the same line several times in Hollywood Canteen (1944), in which she plays herself]: "I don`t know what`s wrong with me, but I think I just can`t play myself. I don`t know how! But, if you give me a drink - give me a cigarette - give me a gun - I`ll play any old bag you want me to. I just can`t play myself!"

[on John Wayne] I certainly would have given anything to have worked with John Wayne. He`s the most attractive man who ever walked the earth, I think.

I see - she`s the original good time that was had by all.

[On her character in All About Eve (1950)]: "Margo Channing was not a bitch. She was an actress who was getting older and was not too happy about it. And why should she? Anyone who says that life begins at 40 is full of it. As people get older their bodies begin to decay. They get sick. They forget things. What`s good about that?"

My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.

Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone - but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.

To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.

There was more good acting at Hollywood parties than ever appeared on the screen.

I have never known the great actor who... didn`t plan eventually to direct or produce. If he has no such dream, he is usually bitter, ungratified and eventually alcoholic.

The male ego, with few exceptions, is elephantine to start with.

I`d marry again if I found a man who had fifteen million dollars, would sign over half to me, and guarantee that he`d be dead within a year.

I always had the will to win. I felt it baking cookies. They had to be the best cookies anyone baked.

I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple devoured has seeds. It is endless.

I do not regret one professional enemy I have made. Any actor who doesn`t dare to make an enemy should get out of the business.

If you want a thing well done, get a couple of old broads to do it.

[on Errol Flynn] He was not an actor of enormous talent -- he would have admitted that himself -- but in all those swashbuckling things he was beautiful.

He was just beautiful...Errol (Flynn). He himself openly said I don`t know really anything about acting, and I admire his honesty because he`s absolutely right.

You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good . . . Joan Crawford is dead. Good! [on the death of her long-time nemesis]

Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it`s because I`m not a bitch. Maybe that`s why [Joan Crawford] always plays ladies.

[on sex] "God`s biggest joke on human beings."

At one time, the actress, who won Oscars for Dangerous (1935) and Jezebel (1938) had quite a reputation for being difficult - "At one time?!" she erupts. "I`ve been known as difficult for 50 years, practically! What do you mean `at one time`?! Nooo, I`ve been like this for 50 years. And it`s always always to make it the best film I can make it!"

I was thought to be `stuck up.` I wasn`t. I was just sure of myself. This is and always has been an unforgivable quality to the unsure.

Today everyone is a star - they`re all billed as `starring` or `also starring`. In my day, we earned that recognition.

I`m the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.

[when told not to speak ill of the dead] `Just because someone is dead does not mean they have changed!`

[in reference to Katharine Hepburn`s tie for the 1968 Oscar with Barbra Streisand]: "I wanted to be the first to win three Oscars, but Miss Hepburn has done it. Actually it hasn`t been done. Miss Hepburn only won half an Oscar. If they`d given me half an Oscar I would have thrown it back in their faces. You see, I`m an Aries. I never lose."

"Of course I replaced my father. I became my own father and everyone else`s." [referring to her parents` divorce when she was 7]

An affair now and then is good for a marriage. It adds spice, stops it from getting boring. I ought to know.

I would advise any woman against having an affair with a married man believing he will ever leave his wife, no matter how often he says his wife does not understand him. Love is not as necessary to a man`s happiness as it is to a woman`s. If her marriage is satisfactory, a woman will seldom stray. A man can be totally contented and still be out howling at the moon.

What a fool I was to come to Hollywood where they only understand platinum blondes and where legs are more important than talent.

[On rival Joan Crawford]: "She has slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie."

I went back to work because someone had to pay for the groceries.

Getting old is not for sissies.

"I wouldn`t piss on her if she was on fire." (in reference to `Joan Crawford`)