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A lot of people say that my life is wasted on me because I could be a bigger asshole than I am, but I’ve chosen not to be.

Bette Midler

Marriage is such hard work. And it’s full of rage and real human drama.
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Drama Hard Work Real
If you’re frightened, you’re out of luck.
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Frightened Luck Out
Culturally, it’s very hard to change people’s attitudes about public space.
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Attitude People Space
I always try to balance the light with the heavy – a few tears of human spirit in with the sequins and the fringes.
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Art Cancer Light
It’s a different world now: Stars come and go quickly, and there are so many of them. I read a statistic that all the record companies combined used to put out around 3,000 albums in a year. Now they put out something like 30,000!
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Different Stars Years
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.
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Dream Fuzzy
Do you want to live and work in a garbage dump? I don’t. That’s partly because I grew up in the most pristine environment possible – Hawaii, where it is sacrilege to leave your garbage on the ground.
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Dump Garbage Possible Wanted
I think most of us are torn. We have at least two people at war in our body. One person wants to retire and grow fabulous tomatoes, and the other wants to stand up on a pedestal and be worshipped and get bigger and bigger and bigger until she explodes.
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Thinking Two War
When I read that, I burst into tears. It was so generous and so basic. Not fluffy. I can’t understand why we scrimp on education and shortchange our kids. Why would the citizenry do that to the people who are going to inherit its republic?
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Country Generous Kids Shortchange Understand
While I was growing up, I believed I could do anything I could think of. So the challenge was always to keep thinking – to get to where I wanted to be and then to think of somewhere else to go.
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Else Growing Somewhere Thinking
It is true that in this culture, they throw you out when you get older. I see it all the time, especially in my business. At my age, you’re playing somebody’s mother – and there aren’t even a lot of those roles!
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Age Culture Mother
When it’s time to shuffle off this mortal coil, you leave your ashes to be composted.
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Ashes Mortals Shuffle
My idea of superwoman is someone who scrubs her own floors.
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Cleaning Ideas Superwoman
I would much rather watch myself than listen to myself. The moving is second nature, but the listening… that’s the art.
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Art Listening Moving
I want to have fun, and I want to give people a good laugh.
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Fun Giving People
I loved the photographs of people wearing elaborate makeup and costumes – they really pulled at me inside. I was in that library every week for years, until I was about 13. I had a rich interior life, because I didn’t have much of a social life.
BETTE MIDLER

Books Costumes Love Photograph Until

A lot of people say that my life is wasted on me because I could be a bigger asshole than I am, but I’ve chosen not to be.

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A lot of people say that my life is wasted on me because I could be a bigger asshole than I am, but I’ve chosen not to be.

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Popular Authors

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