Barbra Streisand Quotations

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

There is nothing more important in life than love.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

We have a president who stole the presidency through family ties, arrogance and intimidation, employing Republican operatives to exercise the tactics of voter fraud by disenfranchising thousands of blacks, elderly Jews and other minorities.

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

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 love road trips! My husband and I love that. We bought a truck with a bench seat so we could put the dog in the middle.

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.

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

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

I am simple, complex, generous, selfish, unattractive, beautiful, lazy, and driven.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.'

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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

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

The audience is the barometer of the truth.

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.

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 think of myself as a girl from Brooklyn.

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

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

Myths are a waste of time. They prevent progression.

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

On a very basic level, many people think celebrities have too much already, so we shouldn't be entitled to our political opinions.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Nobody on this earth has the right to tell anyone that their love for another human being is morally wrong.

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

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.

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 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.

It is sort of boring to stay in the same spot. You know, I didn't set out to become the first to do this, the first to do that. It was just that my interests were so diversified.

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

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

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

My mother told me I should be a secretary, but I wanted to be an actress from when I was very young.

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.

I just became a singer, because I could never get work as an actress.

I like to stay home a lot. I like to do other things too, like decorate or build.

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 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.

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

My mother never really thought I could become anything.

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

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

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

As a young woman, I wanted nothing more than to see my name in lights.

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

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

I started going to acting school when I was 14, and I would always have my own take on things.

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

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 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.

I remember when I was 5 living on Pulaski Street in Brooklyn, the hallway of our building had a brass banister and a great sound, a great echo system. I used to sing in the hallway.

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

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

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.

I can't cook, at all. I would not know how to make coffee. I took cooking classes, so I know how to make chocolate soufflé, but ask me if I want to make soufflé. I let somebody else make the chocolate soufflé, and I eat it. I found that, when I took cooking classes and tried to cook, I didn't want to eat it. The joy was gone. I was always filthy with the stuff, and then had to clean it up. I don't like that.

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.

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

How could such a destructive man [referring to Bush] be so popular with the American people?... Not only is he poisoning our air and water - he's poisoning our political system as well.

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.

He (son Jason) doesn't see me as a (gay) icon, he sees me as his mother who touches his hair too much. No, I love being an icon to anybody. Equal rights, you know?