Lauren Bacall Quotes

The early romance was the most romantic experience I have ever had in my life - far surpassing anything I might've dreamed of or imagined, it was quite amazing. When you are young and it's your first love and you are just carried away by it and that's all you can think about.

[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.

If there was a pause in a conversation with anyone, you could always light a cigarette, or if a man lit a cigarette for you, you could look up. It's the most dramatic thing in the world because it's intimate, it's suggestive, and that's one of the problems with giving it up, is that it's a very useful tool.

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!

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

God if the press ever quoted anyone correctly it would be brilliant.

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.

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

I wish Frank Sinatra would just shut up and sing.

When everything happens to you when you're so young, you're very lucky, but by the same token, you're never going to have that same feeling again. The first time anything happens to you - your first love, your first success - the second one is never the same.

The first time anything happens to you - your first love, your first success - the second one is never the same.

I figure if I have my health, can pay the rent and I have my friends, I call it 'content.'

When you talk about a great actor, you're not talking about Tom Cruise. His whole behavior is so shocking. It's inappropriate and vulgar and absolutely unacceptable to use your private life to sell anything commercially, but I think it's kind of a sickness.

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.

How in hell can you handle love without turning your life upside down? That's what love does, it changes everything.

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

I hope I'm thought of as not just a showbiz personality, but as someone who has lived a life and who has hopefully made a contribution to something along the way - someone who is a human being as well as an actress.

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.

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

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.

I would hate now to be married. It does occur to me on occasion that, if I fall and hit my head, there will be no one to make the phone call. But who wants to think about that disaster, I'd prefer not to.

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."

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

I don't sit around thinking that I'd like to have another husband; only another man would make me think that way.

Patience was not my strong point.

I've always felt that work - learning from people who know more than I know - is what keeps you going.

I am essentially a loner.

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

I called my business manager in California and said, 'Sell all of my stock' - what little of it I had - and it's the only smart financial move I ever made.

In Hollywood, an equitable divorce settlement means each party getting fifty percent of publicity.

We live in an age of mediocrity. Stars today are not the same stature as Bogie [Humphrey Bogart], James Cagney, Spencer Tracy, Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart [James Stewart].

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.

Young people, even in Hollywood, ask me, 'Were you really married to Humphrey Bogart?' 'Well, yes, I think I was,' I reply.

You don't always win your battles, but it's good to know you fought.

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.

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 real stakes in the theater are high - they are life stakes. That's what I love about it. You gamble with your life, and that's a gamble worth taking.

Imagination is the highest kite one can fly.

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.

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.

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

My mother was the greatest example to me of anyone I've ever known. She didn't have an easy life. I adored her. She worked hard all her life, and she was the one who set my values. She was quite an amazing woman, although she wasn't tough at all.

I finally felt that I came into my own when I went on the stage.

The biggest misconception people have about me is that I'm in control of every situation. I'm rarely in control of any situation.

I was this flat-chested, big-footed, lanky thing.

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

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

A planned life is a dead life.