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.

A man's illness is his private territory and, no matter how much he loves you and how close you are, you stay an outsider. You are healthy.

Acting is a life of rejection.

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

Most women use more brains picking a horse in the third at Belmont than they do picking a husband

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.

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