Lauren Bacall Quotes

Acting is a life of rejection.

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.

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

You can't always be a leading lady.

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.

The purity of Jewish upbringing - the restrictions that one carries through life being a 'nice Jewish girl' - what a burden.

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

I had a lot of frustrations about my career. A lot of, you know, times where I felt I should've been considered for a part that I wasn't considered for.

I like to work with really good professional people - anyone with real talent.

His (Frank Sinatra) attention span was not long, shall we say.

Patience was not my strong point.

A planned life is a dead life.

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

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.

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

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

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

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."

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

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.

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

People should tell your children what life is all about - it's about work.

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.

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

Actors today go into TV, which I don't consider has a lot to do with acting. They only think of stardom

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

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

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

Naïveté, thy name is me.

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

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

I'll miss Hollywood. Of the twenty friends I thought I had, I'll miss the six I really had.

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

When you are playing a part like that where you have traveled - you begin to think, God what a great life. Independent, living alone and how dramatic.

I've still not gotten my choice of the best roles in the world.

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.

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.

Hollywood is the only place in the world where an amicable divorce means each one gets fifty percent of the publicity.

"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."

But the amazing thing about life, I've finally discovered, is that you really don't learn from past mistakes. You do logically, reasonably, but emotionally not for a second.

Here is a test to find out whether your mission in life is complete. If you’re alive, it isn’t.

Imagination is the highest kite that can fly.

Childhood anxieties, childhood fears, never disappear entirely. They fade, but not away.

I used to tremble from nerves so badly that the only way I could hold my head steady was to lower my chin practically to my chest and look up at Bogie. That was the beginning of "The Look."

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

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

People should tell their children what life is all about-it's about work.

A famous love story is hard to maintain when you both live in the spotlight.

We live in an age of mediocrity.

I am not a has-been. I am a will be.