Barbra Streisand Quotes

What is dangerous about the far right is not that it takes religion seriously - most of us do - but rather that it condemns all other spiritual choices - the Buddhist, the Jew, the Muslim, and many others who consider themselves to be good Christians. The wall of separation between church and state is needed precisely because religion, like art, is too important a part of the human experience to be choked by the hands of censors.

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

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.

I won't leave forks in the dish rack overnight because I believe that the tines attract demonic energy.

I always wear the same thing at home. I can't be bothered with jewelry. My pants have elastic waists. I like to be comfortable. There are so many more important things to worry about.

Moviemakers can be late to a subject, or afraid, but often they are brave and ahead of their time.

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

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

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.

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

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

I'm a terrible lip-syncer anyway because I have to be in the moment, and I can't lip-sync to something I recorded three months before.

I hear these melodies. I hear horn lines and string lines. That's what's fun about recording with an orchestra.

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

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

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?

When I sing, people shut up.

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?

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.

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

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

Love comes from the most unexpected places.

I got sent to a health camp when I was about 6 years old, and we all had to wear the same starchy blue uniform. The lady who took care of me after school knit me a burgundy sweater. It was the only thing that gave me any individuality.

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

New York critics - I hear when one of them watched "A Star Is Born", he talked back to the screen.

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.

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

In the music business, we all do different things, but we sit there and admire other people who can write a song differently or sing differently. It's not so competitive.

what with the follies and an indecent proposal it's been quite a night

My mother had a great voice. Not like mine, not like my sister's, not like my son's - a high soprano voice, but like a bird. I mean, really beautiful.

To have ego means to believe in your own strength. And to also be open to other people's views. It is to be open, not closed. So, yes, my ego is big, but it's also very small in some areas. My ego is responsible for my doing what I do - bad or good.

I think of myself as a girl from Brooklyn.

And remember, this was a president (George W. Bush) who was selected by the Supreme Court rather than the people.

I still like my antique clothes.

I guess if you have an original take on life, or something about you is original, you don't have to study people who came before you. You don't have to mimic anybody. You just have a gut feeling inside, an instinct that tells you what's right for you, and you can't do it in any other way.

Life's too short. Start with Dessert!

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

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

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

My nose was part of my heritage, and if I had talent to sing and to act, why wasn't that enough?

The result [Republicans winning the Senate] would be devastating for reproductive choice, the environment, civil liberties, Social Security and health care, as well as corporate accountability.

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.

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.

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

Eighteenth century American furniture and the design of the architects Greene and Greene are my special love.

The artist as citizen is here to stay.

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.

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

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.

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

Stay true to yourself. People respond to authenticity.

It always gave me the creeps when I saw performers who desperately wanted the audience to like them. That's not what I'm about.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

I am a nice person. I care about my driver having lunch, you know ...

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.

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 find George Bush and Dick Cheney frightening, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft frightening.

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

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 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 don't keep a dog and bark yourself.

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

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 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.'

When I was working a lot, I felt guilty as a parent. I couldn't pick up my son every day from school, bake him cookies and that kind of thing.

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.

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

It's like an American tradition. A person gets successful and then he's supposed to change for the worse. It's silly.

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

We elected a President, not a Pope.

I was raised on the streets, in hot, steamy Brooklyn, with stifled air.

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

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

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

I knew that with a mouth like mine, I just hadda be a star or something.

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.

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

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

I'm a work in progress.

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

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

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

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

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

Art transcends politics this weekend.

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

I must have got my detailed, obsessive streak from my father, who was an English teacher, because my mother wasn't like me at all.

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

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

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

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.