Barbra streisand quotes

A large part of me is pure nebbish - plain, dull, uninteresting. There's a more flamboyant part, too. Obviously.

There's a part of you that always remains a child, no matter how mature you get, how sophisticated or weary.

Men are allowed to have passion and commitment for their work... a woman is allowed that feeling for a man, but not her work.

I don't enjoy public performances and being up on a stage. I don't enjoy the glamour. Like tonight, I am up on stage and my feet hurt.

You don't ask a man, 'Do you want to be in control [of your job]?' You assume he wants control. Why would a woman be any different?

I like simple things. Elastic waists, so I can eat.

When I was a teenager in New York, I was buying antique clothes. I still am.

Being a woman in music was fine, but when I wanted to direct, I was poking my head into a man's world.

Art transcends politics this weekend.

Why am I so famous? What am I doing right? What are the others doing wrong?

I think, is wonderful about growing older, is appreciation for the miracle of existence, of life. I thank God every day. I also do believe that belief and imagination manifests reality. And therefore, even though it took twenty-five years, I did find the house, eventually, and the man I could live with.

I still like my antique clothes.

I've considered having my nose fixed. But I didn't trust anyone enough. If I could do it myself with a mirror.

How can we accept a situation in which there are no longer orchestras, choruses, libraries or art classes to nourish our children? We need more support for the arts, not less -- particularly to make this rich world available to young people whose vision is choked by a stark reality. How many children, who have no other outlet in their lives for their grief, have found solace in an instrument to play or a canvas to paint on? When you take into consideration the development of the human heart, soul and imagination, don't the arts take on just as much importance as math or science?

I'm not that ambitious any more. I just like my privacy. I wish I really wasn't talked about at all.

Everybody's frightened a bit. But how many of us just go through the fear and do it anyway?

What does it mean when people applaud? Should I give 'em money? Say thank you? Lift my dress? The lack of applause - that I can respond to.

I'm sure that I don't know everything I want to know. I have so much more to learn.

My mother never really thought I could become anything.

I only began to sing because I couldn't get a job as an actress.

Issues of foreign policy have a place in every election for President.

I'm a work in progress.

I worked in a Chinese restaurant.

I believe in love and lust and sex and romance. I don't want everything to add up to some perfect equation. I want mess and chaos. I want someone to go crazy out of his mind for me. I want to feel passion and heat and sweat and madness. I want valenties and cupids and all of that crap. I want it all.

If I hear a record once, I usually never listen to it again. I rarely listen to music - unless it's Billie Holiday.

Stay true to yourself. People respond to authenticity.

I don't think I'm tough in a so called tough way. I'm tough on myself.

Why is it men are permitted to be obsessed about their work, but women are only permitted to be obsessed about men?

Everyone has a right to love and be loved, and nobody on this earth has the right to tell anyone that their love for another human being is morally wrong.

My biggest nightmare is I'm driving home and get sick and go to hospital. I say: 'Please help me.' And the people say: 'Hey, you look like...' And I'm dying while they're wondering whether I'm Barbra Streisand.

Part of our society kills what it loves, despises what it's created. It really hates success.

My friend Quincy Jones says we won our first Grammys together in 1963. I have no recollection. I don't even remember the room. When he showed me the picture, I remembered what I wore. But it's like awards don't mean anything.

I'd started going to acting classes at 14, played 'Medea' at 15 and really wanted to be a classical actress.

Art is the signature of a generation; artists have a way of defining the times.

For me, one of the most disturbing elements of the right wing's political agenda is that it believes that there is one correct spiritual and moral path for all people to follow. The danger inherent in this is its explicit refusal to accept anyone who happens to lead a different lifestyle, and the condemnation of those who differ.

When they tried me out as a host on TV, I found that I just couldn't be that gregarious person. I was stranger than that.

I also have intense relationships with furniture... probably because we practically had none when I was growing up.

A man is commanding - a woman is demanding. A man is forceful - a woman is pushy. A man is uncompromising - a woman is a ball-breaker. A man is a perfectionist - a woman's a pain in the ass. He's assertive - she's aggressive. He strategizes - she manipulates. He shows leadership - she's controlling. He's committed - she's obsessed. He's persevering - she's relentless. He sticks to his guns - she's stubborn. If a man wants to get it right, he's looked up to and respected. If a woman wants to get it right, she's difficult and impossible.

I go by instinct - I don't worry about experience.

I can take any truth; just don't lie to me.

What reaches an audience is honesty. If you're saying something truthful that's supposed to be a funny line, it's going to be funny. And if it's supposed to be a serious line, it's going to be serious. But, I don't think there's a distinction between how you play drama or comedy, if it's based in the truth.

. . . it is true, even people with painful childhoods. . . grow up to be more interesting people. So, there's always a positive to a negative.

Thank God there were a couple of people in my life who said, "Go on, go on - you can do it!

The idea of a liberal media bias is simply a myth. If only it were true, we might have a more humane, open-minded, and ultimately effective public debate on the issues facing the country.

Most awards, you know, they don't give you unless you go and get them - did you know that? Terribly discouraging.

Success to me is having ten honeydew melons and eating only the top half of each slice.

progress, whatever your definition of it, is not inevitable.

The moral immune system of this country has been weakened and attacked, and the AIDS virus is the perfect metaphor for it. The malignant neglect of the last twelve years has led to breakdown of our country's immune system, environmentally, culturally, politically, spiritually and physically.

I've been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good.

I wasn't supported, I wasn't given any self-esteem.

Life's too short. Start with Dessert!

A man who graduated high in his class at Yale Law School and made partnership in a top law firm would be celebrated. But a woman who accomplishes this is treated with suspicion.

I don't care what you say about me. Just be sure to spell my name wrong.

Sometimes, when you work with mediocre talents, they feel entitled. They act like stars. Genuinely talented people don't.

I need instant gratification.

Why don't you have a cup of coffee at least? I, um, I'm a little low in sugar and I don't have any cream, but it's real coffee.

The dream - you never achieve it. The excitement of life lies in the hope, in the striving for something rather than the attainment.

I prefer things that are private, so I love recording and I love making films, as a filmmaker, because it uses every bit of what you have experienced or know, whether it's graphics composition, decorating, psychology, storytelling, or whatever it is. It's a wonderful thing.

Our role as artist is more controversial now because there are those, claiming the absolute authority of religion, who detest much of our work as much as they detest most of our politics. Instead of rationally debating subjects like abortion or gay rights, they condemn as immoral those who favor choice and tolerance. They disown their own dark side and magnify everyone else's until, at the extreme, doctors are murdered in the name of protecting life. I wonder, who is this God they invoke, who is so petty and mean? Is God really against gun control and food stamps for poor children?

It takes me about 10 years to appreciate what it is I've done.

Around people I don't know, I'm totally at a loss.

I do have friends that are Republicans, and we have very spirited conversations on a whole range of issues. I am often baffled by why they are Republicans, but I enjoy the dialogue and can move beyond politics to find common ground in my personal relationships.

The audience is the best judge of anything. They cannot be lied to. Truth brings them closer. A moment that lags - they're gonna cough.

I've always liked working really hard and then doing nothing in particular. So, consequently, I didn't overexpose myself; I guess I maintained a kind of mystery. I wasn't ambitious.

I just don't want to be hampered by my own limitations.

When I was maybe 5 or 6 years old, the neighborhood girls would sit on the stoop and sing. I was known as the kid who had a good voice and no father.

Sometimes you resent the people you love and need the most. Love is so fascinating in all its forms, and I think everyone who has ever been a mother will relate to this.

I don't like the word 'superstar'. It has ridiculous implications. These words - star, stupor, superstar, stupid star - they're misleading. It's a myth.

I just don't like the idea of her singing my songs. Who the hell does she thinks she is? The world doesn't need another Streisand! (on Diana Ross)

You have got to discover you, what you do, and trust it.

I don't feel like a legend. I feel like a work in progress.

Art finds a way to be constructive. It becomes heat in cold places; it becomes light in dark places.

I was a personality before I became a person - I am simple, complex, generous, selfish, unattractive, beautiful, lazy and driven.

Directing is so interesting. You know, it just sort of encompasses everything that you see, that you know, that you've felt, that you have observed.

No one should have to conform to some mythical concept of the ideal family.

Performing, for me, has always been a very inner process.

I hate tooting my own horn, but after Steven Spielberg saw Yentl, he said: "I wish I could tell you how to fix your picture, but I can't. It's the best film I've seen since Citizen Kane".

Believe in the power of your voice! Be yourself. Everyone is unique.

A human being is only interesting if he's in contact with himself.

I'd take out a joint and light it. First, just faking it. Then I started lighting live joints, passing them around to the band, you know. I was great, it relieved all my tensions. And I ended up with the greatest supply of grass ever. Other acts up and down the Strip heard about what I was doing - Little Anthony and the Imperials, people like that - and started sending me the best dope in the world. I never ran out.

I'm interested in the truth, and unauthorized biographies are not. Yes, I would like to correct those errors someday.

Oh God, don't envy me, I have my own pains.

When I sing, people shut up.

You know, for me, the realization that two people should have the right to form a sacred union regardless of their gender was strengthened when I saw a performance of the play The Normal Heart in 1985. After feeling the love those two men had for each other, I dare anybody not to want them to get married by the end.

I'll see a celadon green room in an 18th century New Hampshire house and just fall in love. Colors stay in my head.

A human being is only interesting if he's in contact with himself. I learned you have to trust yourself, be what you are, and do what you ought to do the way you should do it. You have got to discover you, what you do, and trust it.

I am also very proud to be a liberal. Why is that so terrible these days? The liberals were liberatorsthey fought slavery, fought for women to have the right to vote, fought against Hitler, Stalin, fought to end segregation, fought to end apartheid. Liberals put an end to child labor and they gave us the five day work week! What's to be ashamed of?

I have one son. Of everything I've done in my life, nothing matches the feeling of having life growing inside you.

I was a personality before I became a person.

You know, I can't remember my good reviews. I remember negative ones. They stay in my mind.

Doubt can motivate you, so don't be afraid of it. Confidence and doubt are at two ends of the scale, and you need both. They balance each other out.

Art does not exist only to entertain, but also to challenge one to think, to provoke, even to disturb, in a constant search for truth.

How I wish we lived in a time when laws were not necessary to safeguard us from discrimination.

I tell you what I envy about people in love - I'd love it if someone knew me I mean really knew me. What I like what I'm afraid of what kind of toothpaste I use." - Rose Morgan

If a man wants to get it right, he's looked up to and respected. If a woman wants to get it right, she's difficult or impossible. If he acts, produces and directs, he's called multitalented. If she does the same thing, she's called vain and egotistical.

I hated singing. I wanted to be an actress. But I don't think I'd have made it any other way.

I arrived in Hollywood without having my nose fixed, my teeth capped, or my name changed. That is very gratifying to me.

Just imagine how boring life would be if we were all the same. My idea of a perfect world is one in which we really appreciated each other's differences: Short, tall; Democrat, Republican; black, white; gay, straight-a world in which all of us are equal, but definitely not the same.

I don't know why it is that we need to denigrate, to knock down. It's so sick.

It's not a date. We're just agreeing to eat at the same table.

I think when I was younger, I wanted to be a star, until I became a star, and then it's a lot of work. It's work to be a star. I don't enjoy the stardom part. I only enjoy the creative process.

Marlon Brando. The finest actor who ever lived. He was my idol when I was 13. He's done enough work to last two lifetimes. Everything I do, I think: Can Brando play this with me?

Why does a woman work ten years to change a man's habits and then complain that he's not the man she married?

Love comes from the most unexpected places.

You have to live life in the moment and get the most out of it.

I never liked stardom. It's weird to me. I only like the creative process. I only like the work.

It is every woman's dream to be some man's dream woman.

What is exciting is not for one person to be stronger than the other... but for two people to have met their match and yet they are equally as stubborn, as obstinate, as passionate, as crazy as the other.

I can say, 'I am terribly frightened and fear is terrible and awful and it makes me uncomfortable, so I won't do that because it makes me uncomfortable.' Or I could say, 'Get used to being uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable doing something that's risky. But so what? Do you want to stagnate and just be comfortable?'

I can't stand to see red in my profit-or-loss column. I'm Taurus the bull, so I react to red. If I see it, I sell my stocks quickly.

I never sing in the shower either.

It's very often the artist who gives a voice to the voiceless by speaking up when no one else will.

I'm not weird, just different from people who aren't different.

There is nothing more important in life than love.

I want the best product for my audience, and if I don't care 100%, who will? It's my name, my likeness that goes out there.

One thing's for sure: now when I look at Funny Girl, I think I was gorgeous. I was too beautiful to play Fanny Brice.

They're called 'angels' because they're in heaven until the reviews come out.

Why is it people who want the truth never believe it when they hear it?

I don't like talking about myself and I don't like talking about the work.

Myths are a waste of time. They prevent progression.

I love things that are indescribable, like the taste of an avocado or the smell of a gardenia.

I don't read music. Not even essentially. Not even nonessentially.

Just like my father, I've always loved education. In school I was a member of the honor society.

I was kind of a wild child. I wasn't taught the niceties of life.

I wish I could be like Shaw who once read a bad review of one of his plays, called the critic and said: 'I have your review in front of me and soon it will be behind me.'