SANDRA BERNHARD QUOTES

American comedian & actress (1955- )

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I like to play different versions of myself, but I think that's kind of what everyone ultimately really does. There are a few people who are real chameleons and can sink into something and truly disappear ... but that is really not what I was meant to do.

SANDRA BERNHARD

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I love to watch people. I don't need to be the center of attention. I don't like to suck the air out of a room because there's so much to be gained by just being quiet. I'm like a time release capsule. It may take me 12 hours to fully absorb and suddenly I'm releasing my crazy again.

SANDRA BERNHARD

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You know something funny? I never came out. I feel like who I am spoke for itself, and I never wanted my sexuality to be my defining moment, and it isn't, so I feel like to me, the most important thing is that you're comfortable in your own skin.

SANDRA BERNHARD

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I've never had any need for somebody to be my role model. I've been my own role model.

SANDRA BERNHARD

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If I wanted more commercial success, I guess I wish I would've been willing to play the game a little bit more and be a little bit more malleable in that way ... but I wasn't. I'm still not, really. It's just not who I am.

SANDRA BERNHARD

Tags: success

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I was never interested in joining, like, children's theater or anything like that. I had contempt for that kind of stuff. I needed to be the solo show. I needed it to be the Sandy Show.

SANDRA BERNHARD

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My father was a proctologist; my mother was an abstract artist. That's how I view the world.

SANDRA BERNHARD

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I have definitely started to edit a lot of things that I would not have thought twice about saying 10 or 15 years ago. It simply isn't worth it to be exposed to the unsophisticated thinking of so many people. I've learned how to recalibrate my approach to social commentary.

SANDRA BERNHARD

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My whole point of view was, "I'm not gonna change. I'm not gonna get a nose job. I'm not going to pretend I'm the girl next door."

SANDRA BERNHARD

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Well, the most important, overriding arc of my career has been that I would never be self-deprecating. I had seen all these people before me who are great performers and were reflective of their time--Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers and Totie Fields and all the early comediennes--and it was always like, "I'm fat! I'm ugly! My husband has to put a bag over my head when he comes to bed!" I was like, "I'm never gonna do that."

SANDRA BERNHARD

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There are too many f***ing people on the planet. Everybody's got to stop having 40 kids. We need free access to birth control and health care for women.

SANDRA BERNHARD

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I think left to her own devices, my mother never would have married or had kids. I think she would have just pursued her art and gone off and traveled--she had friends in South America and places like that. She was always very vague about it. But it was not her first choice to get married--my grandmother sort of coerced her into it. I don't know--I don't think my mother was a particularly happy person in her life, until my father divorced her when she was like sixty-two or sixty-three, and I think it was the first time in her life that she really had a good time and traveled and hung out with her friends. It was all on her terms, and it was nice to see her get to experience that.

SANDRA BERNHARD

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I would lie in bed at night and have full-blown fantasies about taking my bows on stage on Broadway. It was so embedded in me that this was what I wanted. Then, later, at my cousin's bat mitzvah in Detroit, the band was playing "Hello, Dolly!" and the bandleader was singing. I thought he was doing a terrible job, so I went up and grabbed the mic and said, "Let me do this for you." He was like, "Beat it, kid." It was like a scene out of a Woody Allen movie. And my cousin Bernice went, "You let her sing this song." So I got up and sang and brought the house down! It was just where I belonged--you know, in front of a big crowd of Jews, performing.... Who doesn't love being loved?

SANDRA BERNHARD

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My audience is my audience and everybody in it forms an alliance every night. You perform for the entire crowd -- it's not about singling anyone out. And if your work is very, very daring and interesting, then smart people come to it, whether they're gay, straight, black, white, men, women. I mean, you gotta be able to get underneath what's really going on culturally, and then you're always gonna have a smart audience sitting in front of you.

SANDRA BERNHARD

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It's time for people in this country to go, 'Yeah, this is how it's got to be if we are all going to live on the planet, and if this planet is going to sustain itself with us on it, then everything has to change itself drastically.' If it doesn't, we'll see how long it all lasts.

SANDRA BERNHARD

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Love is the only shocking act left on the face of the earth.

SANDRA BERNHARD

Tags: love

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I always have this feeling that there's going to be at least one more big, big role that will be another breakout part for me. I'm not sure when that's coming along, but I keep thinking about it, looking for it. I've been writing them too, but it's hard to get things done. I've always been a person who's fantasized about how things are going to be, which is sometimes almost as satisfying as something actually happening.

SANDRA BERNHARD

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As smart as I am, I didn't really apply myself in school, because all I could think about was leaving and becoming this fabulous, international, sophisticated person.

SANDRA BERNHARD

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It's getting harder to hone your craft because of YouTube and the internet. You really need to get out to the clubs to hone your craft. A lot of people these days don't have the patience.

SANDRA BERNHARD

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I mean, you can talk about anything that's been talked about a million times, but if it's your experience and your point of view, you can always bring something new to it.

SANDRA BERNHARD

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