Bette Davis movie quotes

“- Margo: As it happens, there are particular aspects of my life to which I would like to maintain sole and exclusive rights and privileges.
- Bill Simpson: For instance what?
- Margo: For instance: you!”
Bette Davis - Margo Channing
Gary Merrill - Bill Simpson

“- Birdie: There's a message from the bartender. Does Miss Channing know she ordered domestic gin by mistake?
- Margo: The only thing I ordered by mistake is the guests. They're domestic, too, and they don't care what they drink as long as it burns!”
Thelma Ritter - Birdie Coonan
Bette Davis - Margo Channing

“I detest cheap sentiment.”
Bette Davis - Margo Channing

“I'll admit I may have seen better days, but I'm still not to be had for the price of a cocktail, like a salted peanut.”
Bette Davis - Margo Channing

“Bill's thirty-two. He looks thirty-two. He looked it five years ago, he'll look it twenty years from now. I hate men.”
Bette Davis - Margo Channing

“Funny business, a woman's career - the things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. That's one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not: being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had...” (continue)(continue reading)
Bette Davis - Margo Channing

“- Margo: Birdie, you don't like Eve, do you?
- Birdie: You looking for an answer or an argument?
- Margo: An answer.
- Birdie: No.
- Margo: Why not?
- Birdie: Now you want an argument.”
Bette Davis - Margo Channing
Thelma Ritter - Birdie Coonan

“Davis, Bette
She did it the hard way.”
Bette Davis

“When I saw my first film test I ran from the projection room screaming.”
Bette Davis

“I was the first star who ever came out of the water looking wet.”
Bette Davis

“In your unhappiness you reached out your hand for help and in my loneliness I took it.”

Bette Davis - Henriette Deluzy-Desportes

“- Charlotte Vale: So many, many thanks to you.
- Jerry Durrance: For what?
- Charlotte Vale: For walking my legs off sight-seeing, and for lunch and for shopping and for a few moments today when I actually felt alive.”
Bette Davis - Charlotte Vale
Paul Henreid - Jerry Durrance

“I should never have married, but I didn't want to live without a man. Brought up to respect the conventions, love had to end in marriage. I'm afraid it did.”
Bette Davis

My fourth husband and I had tremendous fights. He used his fists more than his mouth. They ought to rewrite the ceremony: "In sickness and in hell..."
Bette Davis

“There was more good acting at Hollywood parties than ever appeared on the screen.”
Bette Davis

“- Alan Squier: I belong to a vanishing race. I'm one of the intellectuals.
- Gabrielle Maple: That, that means you've got brains!
- Alan Squier: Yes. Brains without purpose. Noise without sound, shape without substance.”
Leslie Howard - Alan Squier
Bette Davis - Gabrielle Maple

“It's late and I'm very, very tired of youth and love and self-sacrifice.”
Bette Davis - Kit Marlowe

“Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism.”
Bette Davis

“Confidentially, darling, this is more than a hangover.”
Bette Davis - Judith Traherne

“- Mrs. Aylwood: What sort of person are you?
- Jan Curtis: That's hard to say. Just average, I guess.
- Mrs. Aylwood: Are you adventurous? And kind? Are you kind?
- Jan Curtis: I... try to be.
- Mrs. Aylwood: And sensitive? Do you sense things?”
Bette Davis - Mrs. Aylwood
Lynn-Holly Johnson - Jan Curtis

“- MacMahon: Do you think all those years he's been sitting at home waiting for you?
- Fanny Trellis Skeffington: Well, he's always home when I get there.
- MacMahon: He's just got a faster car than you.”

Robert Shayne - MacMahon
Bette Davis - Fanny Trellis Skeffington

“You may not have learned much French today, but I think you have learned a little patience and tolerance and that is the same in every language.”
Bette Davis - Henriette Deluzy-Desportes

“I think you're incapable of any emotion higher up than your stomach!”

Bette Davis - Maggie Cutler

“- Mrs. Van Schuyler: How would a little trip down the Nile suit you?
- Miss Bowers: There is nothing I would dislike more. There are two things in the world I can't abide: it's heat and heathens.
- Mrs. Van Schuyler: Good. Then we'll go. Bowers, pack.”
Bette Davis - Mrs. Van Schuyler
Maggie Smith - Miss Bowers

“I wanted to keep on crying but I didn't have the strength.”
Bette Davis - Fanny Trellis Skeffington