Lauren Bacall Quotes - Page 2

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

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.

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.

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].

How long an actress lives professionally depends on her stamina, the extent of her masochism, her imagination, and her yearning for recognition or approval.

I'm crazy enough to believe in taking chances in every way, in making choices and gambling with your life. That's the kind of gambling I believe in.

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

Legends are all to do with the past and nothing to do with the present.

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.

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

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.

Find me a man who's interesting enough to have dinner with and I'll be happy.

I wish Frank Sinatra would just shut up and sing.

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 not what you expected it to be.

You can't start worrying about what's going to happen. You get spastic enough worrying about what's happening now.

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.

I remember my oldest son, Steve, saying to me once, 'I don't ever remember seeing you with an apron on.' And I thought, that's right, honey, you did not. That was his concept of what a mother should be.

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

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

The reason you get married is to be together, not to be separated.

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.

A planned life is a dead life.

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...