Quotes By Lauren Bacall

I put my career in second place throughout both my marriages and it suffered. I don't regret it. You make choices. If you want a good marriage, you must pay attention to that. If you want to be independent, go ahead. You can't have it all.

Men need to feel important. They feel better when they're with younger girls or unknown girls.

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

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.

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

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

I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.

I'm a total Democrat. I'm anti-Republican. And it's only fair that you know it... I'm liberal. The L word!

Patience was not my strong point.

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

It's inappropriate and vulgar and absolutely unacceptable to use your private life to sell anything commercially.

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.

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 wish Frank Sinatra would just shut up and sing.

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

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

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

What is the point of working all your life and then stopping?

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.

They're 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.

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.

Looking at yourself in a mirror isn't exactly a study of life.

When a woman reaches twenty-six in America, she's on the slide. It's downhill all the way from then on. It doesn't give you a tremendous feeling of confidence and well-being.

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.

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

You can't always be a leading lady.

Imagination is the highest kite one can fly.

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

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.

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