Barbra Streisand

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

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

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

Barbra: 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.

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

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

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

Barbra: 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.

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

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

Barbra: 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.

Barbra: 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.

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

Barbra: How could such a destructive man [George W. 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.

Barbra: 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.

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

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

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

Barbra: 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.

Barbra: I don't know why it is that we need to denigrate, to knock down. It's so unhealthy for the culture. It's so sick.

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

Barbra: Myths are a waste of time. They prevent progression.

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

Barbra: 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.

Barbra: I find bringing the country to the brink of war unilaterally five weeks before an election questionable - and very, very frightening.

Barbra: A human being is only interesting if he's in contact with himself. I learned you have to trust yourself, be what you are, and do what you ought to do the way you should do it.

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