Sandra Bernhard Quotes

I went to New York. I had a dream. I wanted to be a big star, I didn’t know anybody, I wanted to dance, I wanted to sing, I wanted to do all those things, I wanted to make people happy, I wanted to be famous, I wanted everybody to love me. I wanted to be a star. I worked really hard, and my dream came true.

Los Angeles is where you have to be if you want to be an actor. You have no choice. You go there or New York. I flipped a coin about it. It came up New York, so I flipped again. When you're starting out to be an actor, who wants to go where it's cold and miserable and be poor there?

Mom and Pop were proud of my popularity, but from their point of view, show business was no way to make a living.

I don't necessarily need Hollywood.

I didn't want to go get a job or get a degree in business or marketing, or whatever all my friends were getting degrees in.

I always joke around with my parents and say that if Hollywood doesn't work out I'll go to Broadway!

I went to New York for a while before I moved to L.A., and I was very clear that I didn't want to do TV. For a decade, basically, I didn't even entertain the idea.

I had some great high points and thought: 'This is fantastic. I'm going to be a huge star.' Then something happens, and you can't get a job to save your life.

I didn't come to New York to be a star, I brought my star with me.

I really want my career to be as an actor-writer-director-producer, you know? I don't know what will be stronger than the other.

The word 'career' and 'actor' really don't fit in the same paragraph, let alone sentence. There is no career structure for actors.

Being from New York, there's three things you know about Hollywood. You know about the Hollywood sign, Sunset Strip and Hollywood Boulevard with the stars.

I think when I was younger I wasn't really sure if I wanted to act, so I played around with a few different ideas. I wasn't sure whether I might want to write or whether I might want to do something in fashion.

I never walked the streets of New York hoping to be a musical comedy star. For one thing, they would have thought I was too tall, because l was five feet eight and a half, and they were all little bitty things running around in the studio at that time.

I never wanted to go to drama school. I thought that was too many eggs in one basket.

It never dawned on me that I had the option of becoming a comedian. I come from a little dirt street town in northwest Texas, and they really don't talk about the arts there much on career day.

The normal state of an actor is unemployed.

I was a musician for years before I started doing this stuff. Show business was the only thing I ever considered.

I dreamed my whole life of New York being my home.

If I hadn't become an actress, I would be a dancer.

I think that if someone told me I could have been a visual artist, I might have been a visual artist instead. And if I'd known I could have done art history, I would have done that. But I just didn't know.

I always wanted to be a composer, and I sort of went in to NYU as pre-med because I just thought, 'Well... who actually becomes a composer?'

Some teachers used to worry and ask me, 'What are you going to be when you grow up?'

In the beginning, all I wanted to do was to be a singer and a dancer. That was my real groove, my real interest. When it came to doing films, my biggest goal was to do a commercial.

Most producers get into it because they were just never handsome or charismatic or talented enough to be the star.