Barbra Streisand Quotes

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

"There is nothing more important in life than love."

"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."

"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?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

"The audience is the barometer of the truth."

"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."

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

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

"My mother never really thought I could become anything."

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

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

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

"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."

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