I tried to charm the pants off Bob Dylan, but everyone will be disappointed to learn that I was unsuccessful. I got close – a couple of fast feels in the front seat of a Cadillac.
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.
I believe that Judy Garland’s artistry was so fine. I mean, when people say: ‘oh, she brought so much of her life to her music’, I don’t really believe that. I believe that she didn’t have to. She just was a moving human being. That was her gift.
Most people are walking around the city like corpses; they aren’t alive enough to notice the trash. They come from other places and they see it as a big garbage dump.
One of my first role models was Eugene Lang, a wealthy businessman who went back to his elementary school in East Harlem and addressed the sixth-grade class. He looked out at that sea of faces and said, “If any of you wants to go to college, I will pay for it.”
There’s the media-driven universe, in which the public perceives you in a superficial way. Then there’s the universe that you actually inhabit, where you have to get up even if you didn’t sleep so well, and you feel like crap and your face is swollen.
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.
My parents have not insisted that we go to college, but she wanted us to learn. Teacher, librarian, secretary, nurse. All my siblings were employed. But I wanted to be the boss, an independent contractor.
![Bette Midler Quote - [On Denmark:] … that little country of cottage cheese and courage.](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/on-denmark-that-little-country-of-cottage-cheese-a.jpg)
![Bette Midler Quote - 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.](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/the-film-business-is-run-by-men-and-theyre-basical.jpg)
