Quotes from Bette Midler

Education is my next big thing. When music and art were taken out of the schools, I went berserk!

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.

My parents taught me: Do not rely on a man. Not rely on it that you get married and it pays for you. That's what I figured. I have always paid my own bills.

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

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.

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

When I started in this [music] business, I had a dream, but it was amorphous, and I had no experience. I just had a fuzzy notion of what life would be like if I became what I pictured.

Music is probably the only place I get energy from. Music and maybe watching a really tremendous performer, watching a terrific performer like Jagger or watching a great movie.

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.

GOD is watching us, from a Distance.

I'm mad about God! That's why I'm divine.

I want to have fun, and I want to give people a good laugh.

When it's three o'clock in New York, it's still 1938 in London.

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

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

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

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!

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

Life is not fair. And you have to choose your battles, because there are some that you cannot win. If you're passionate about something, then you should pick up your flag and run with it.

A person's life is a journey, a road. Sometimes you go off the road and sometimes you stay on all the way through. But you are the only one on that road. It's your road.

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

When I finally did stop and look at my life, I realized that I had done what I'd set out to do. In my pitiful little way, I had climbed the mountain I had chosen. And there I was, on top.

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