Lauren Bacall Quotations | Page 2

I never believed marriage was a lasting institution . . . I thought that to be married for five years was to be married forever.

I don't think being the only child of a single parent helped. I was always a little unsteady in my self-belief. Then there was the Jewish thing. I love being Jewish, I have no problem with it at all. But it did become like a scar, with all these people saying you don't look it.

Actors today go into TV, which I don't consider has a lot to do with acting. They only think of stardom. If you photograph well, that's enough. I have a terrible time distinguishing one from another. Girls wear their hair the same, and are much too anorexic-looking.

A planned life is a dead life.

Everything in this country [the US] has got to be good looks and unlined faces and thin bodies and people running around in skirts slit up to their ass. It has nothing to do with thinking or with being a human being. There is life in mature people; it's not all over at 24½.

No, I'm afraid they might slip and hit a nerve and I'd end up with one side of my face hanging down or something. I'll just stick with this one for a while and take my chances. I'll be brave.

His attention span was not long, shall we say?

I always brought up my children not to believe in Mothers Day gifts, and now I regret it.

I fairly often have thought how lucky I was. I knew everybody because I was married to Bogie, and that 25-year difference was the most fantastic thing for me to have in my life.

He named me. He liked the sound of it. And I said, well, all right. I felt a little odd about it. I don't understand all that name changing business anyway... No, he felt that Lauren Bacall was better sounding than Betty Bacall. He had a vision of his own. He was a svengali. He wanted to mold me. He wanted to control me. And he did until Mr. Bogart got involved.

"My obit is going to be full of Bogart, I'm sure," she says, adding, "I'll never know if that's true. If that's the way it is, that's the way it is."

Howard Hawks said he'd like to put me in a film with Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart. I thought, "Cary Grant-terrific! Humphrey Bogart-yucch."

I am not a wealthy woman. I wish to hell I was, but I never had a wealthy man.

Losing Bogey was horrible, obviously. Because he was young. And because he gave me my life. I wouldn't have had a - I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't met him. I would have had a completely different kind of life. He changed me, he gave me everything. And he was an extraordinary man.

Remember what Bogie and my mother both used to say: 'Character is the most important thing. All that matters is character!'

After the age of 30 in the movie profession, you're pretty well over as far as the casting people are concerned.

They think actors are freaks - that we're a lot of drunks who party all the time and never work. Well, I for one work my tail off.

In the world of relationships, possibly the most complicated, uncommon, hard to find, hard to keep and most rewarding has got to be friendship.

The madmen seem to live on forever, don't they?

Naïveté, thy name is me.

He [Bogie] had tremendous character and a great sense of honor and would not tolerate lies, even if they asked him what he thought of a movie. We were once at a screening at somebody's house, I forget whose, and they ran a movie that he was in, that he never thought much of. Afterward, the producer asked what he thought of it, and Bogie said "I think it's a crock." And this producer was horrified! He was about to release the movie, and he said to Bogie "Why would you say that?!" Bogie shrugged and said "Then don't ask me." He never played the schmoozing game. He was not into that at all.

The industry is s**t, it's the medium that's great.

I always thought I had crooked eyebrows and crooked teeth. That's why I never understood why people called me a beauty.

All actors are terrified - they just learn how to control it.

Life is not what you expected it to be.

Each time a friend dies, the present becomes the past, in an instant.

A woman isn't complete without a man. But where do you find a man - a real man - these days?

Always I'm feeling, 'You're never going to work again.' That's going to happen one day, but I hope I'm not alive.

Sophie, my dog, is the high in the highlights of my life. Even through rain, snow, ice, and general laziness, she is the reason I smile when I wake up and a comfort to me continually. I could never have imagined that a now five-pound, six-ounce dog would take over my life. But it has happened, and I am happy to have someone to look after and share my moods with.

As long as I can walk and talk, I'll try almost anything. I say "almost" because the high wire is definitely out.

If goodness is its own reward, shouldn't we get a little something for being naughty?

If you want me just whistle. You know how to whistle don't you? Just put your lips together and blow.

I am essentially a loner.

I'm total, total, total liberal and proud of it.

My son tells me, 'Do you realize you are the last one? The last person who was an eyewitness to the golden age?' Young people, even in Hollywood, ask me, 'Were you really married to Humphrey Bogart?' 'Well, yes, I think I was,' I reply. You realize yourself when you start reflecting - because I don't live in the past, although your past is so much a part of what you are - that you can't ignore it. But I don't look at scrapbooks. I could show you some, but I'd have to climb ladders, and I can't climb

Generally women are better than men -- they have more character. I prefer men for some things, obviously, but women have a greater sense of honor and are more willing to take a chance with their lives.

Being a liberal is the best thing on earth you can be. You are welcoming to everyone when you're a liberal. You do not have a small mind.

Very few people want to hear the truth. Bogie was like that, my mother was like that, and I'm like that. I believe in the truth, and I believe in saying what you think. Why not? Do you have to go around whispering all the time or playing a game with people? I just don't believe in that. So I'm not the most adored person on the face of the earth.

One thing I am convinced of is that the more you do, the more you can do.

Acting is a life of rejection.

How many women do we know who were continually kissed by Clark Gable, William Powell, Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy and Fredric March? Only one: Myrna Loy.

[Katharine Hepburn] was much stronger, much more opinionated than I am or ever was, and it was considered attractive on her. But not on me. I don't know. Maybe her Bryn Mawr accent was more appealing than mine.

I find that through the sad times, work is what made my continuing, not breaking down, possible. In work, I was always someone else and I subconsciously reveled in that.

No one has ever written a romance better than we lived it.

When you talk about a great actor, you're not talking about Tom Cruise.

Stardom isn't a profession, it's an accident.

It's not an old movie if you haven't seen it.

If there was one thing I had never been, it was mysterious, and if there was one thing I had never done, it was not talk.

My life has had meaning, with the friendships full and valuable and essential to me. My children, Steve, Leslie, and Sam, are all different-all first-rate human beings with high standards-whom I completely and unequivocally adore-don't always agree with-but always admire and respect. They all have wit and a sense of humor and, thank God, I have hung on to mine.

Growing up takes longer than you think.

No, I don't like legend. I mean, I don't like the category. And to begin with, to me, a legend is something that is not on the Earth, that is dead

I spent my childhood in New York, riding on subways and buses. And you know what you learn if you're a New Yorker? The world doesn't owe you a damn thing.

There are guys who want to screw around all the time, which interests me not at all. God knows we've done that, been there, and we don't want to do that any more.

Isn't hope an incredible, a wonderfully demented thing?

Standing still is the fastest way of moving backwards in a rapidly changing world.

The best things in life are clean living, good works, and big saphires. And not in that order.

Yes, I saw Twilight - my granddaughter made me watch it, she said it was the greatest vampire film ever. After the 'film' was over I wanted to smack her across her head with my shoe, but I do not want a (tell-all) book called Grannie Dearest written on me when I die. So instead I gave her a DVD of Murnau's 1922 masterpiece Nosferatu and told her, 'Now that's a vampire film!' And that goes for all of you! Watch Nosferatu instead!

Well, the people I've known I must say are extraordinary. When I think about some of them, I can't believe that I knew them all. And I think the reason I knew most of them at the beginning was because they were of Bogie's generation, 25 years my senior, not mine. But they were the most talented people of all.

The times in which we're currently living unfortunately, our great leader [George W. Bush] is such a disaster and the entire country is in disastrous shape because of him. It's very frightening, actually, to think that this country has become what it's become and that so many people voted for a man like that. It's terrifying.

I’m not ashamed of what I am - of how I pass through this life. What I am has given me the strength to do it. At my lowest ebb I have never contemplated suicide. I value what is here too much. I have a contribution to make. I am not just take up space in this life. I can add something to the lives I touch. I don’t like everything I know about myself, and I’ll never be satisfied, but nobody’s perfect. I’m not sure where the next years will take me - what they will hold - but I’m open to suggestions.

Life is amazing, life is odd. Life is not what you expected it to be. Things happen... Growing up takes longer than you think.