Lauren Bacall was an American actress. She was named the 20th-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute and received an Academy Honorary Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2009 in recognition of her contribution to the Golden Age of motion pictures. She was known for her distinctive voice and sultry looks. These Lauren Bacall quotes will motivate you.
Best Lauren Bacall Quotes
- “Imagination is the highest kite one can fly.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “You don’t always win your battles, but it’s good to know you fought.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “Life is amazing, life is odd. Life is not what you expected it to be. Things happen… Growing up takes longer than you think.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “Standing still is the fastest way of moving backwards in a rapidly changing world.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “I am not a has-been. I am a will-be.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “You spend a good part of your adult life acquiring things: building a home, filling it with objects that please your eye and make you feel comfortable. Then you spend the last part of your life trying to figure out how to get rid of it all.” ~ Lauren Bacall
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“If goodness is its own reward, shouldn’t we get a little something for being naughty?” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “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!” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “Being a liberal is the best thing on earth you can be. You are welcoming to everyone when you’re a liberal. You do not have a small mind.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “Very few people want to hear the truth. Bogie was like that, my mother was like that, and I’m like that. I believe in the truth, and I believe in saying what you think. Why not? Do you have to go around whispering all the time or playing a game with people? I just don’t believe in that. So I’m not the most adored person on the face of the earth.” ~ Lauren Bacall
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“One thing I am convinced of is that the more you do, the more you can do.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “In the world of relationships, possibly the most complicated, uncommon, hard to find, hard to keep and most rewarding has got to be friendship.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “You learn to cope with whatever you have to cope with. I spent my childhood in New York, riding on subways and buses. And you know what you learn if you’re a New Yorker? The world doesn’t owe you a damn thing.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “Life is not what you expected it to be.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “Growing up takes longer than you think.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “The best things in life are clean living, good works, and big saphires. And not in that order.” ~ Lauren Bacall
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“Isn’t hope an incredible, a wonderfully demented thing?” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “Find me a man who’s interesting enough to have dinner with and I’ll be happy.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “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 anymore.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “You can’t start worrying about what’s going to happen. You get spastic enough worrying about what’s happening now.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “A woman isn’t complete without a man. But where do you find a man – a real man – these days?” ~ Lauren Bacall
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“I wish Frank Sinatra would just shut up and sing.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “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.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “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.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “Legends are all to do with the past and nothing to do with the present.” ~ Lauren Bacall
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“No one has ever written a romance better than we lived it.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “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.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “How in hell can you handle love without turning your life upside down? That’s what love does, it changes everything.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “Stardom isn’t a profession, it’s an accident.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “Being a liberal is the best thing on earth you can be. You are welcoming to everyone when you’re a liberal. You do not have a small mind… I’m total, total, total liberal and proud of it. And I think it’s outrageous to say “The L word”. I mean, excuse me. They should be damn lucky that they were liberals here. Liberals gave more to the population of the United States than any other group.” ~ Lauren Bacall
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“I figure if I have my health, can pay the rent and I have my friends, I call it ‘content.'” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “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.” ~ Lauren Bacall
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“It’s not an old movie if you haven’t seen it.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “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.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “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.” ~ Lauren Bacall Quotes
- “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.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “You had to stay awake married to him [Humphrey Bogart]. Every time I thought I could relax and do everything I wanted, he’d buck. There was no way to predict his reactions, no matter how well I knew him. As he’d said before our wedding, he expected to be happily married and stay that way, but he never expected to settle down. He liked keeping people off balance. He was good for me — I could never be quite sure what he would do.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “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.” ~ Lauren Bacall
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“Remember what Bogie and my mother both used to say: ‘Character is the most important thing. All that matters is character!'” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “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.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “Looking at yourself in a mirror isn’t exactly a study of life.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “He [Bogie] had tremendous character and a great sense of honor and would not tolerate lies, even if they asked him what he thought of a movie. We were once at a screening at somebody’s house, I forget whose, and they ran a movie that he was in, that he never thought much of. Afterward, the producer asked what he thought of it, and Bogie said “I think it’s a crock.” And this producer was horrified! He was about to release the movie, and he said to Bogie “Why would you say that?!” Bogie shrugged and said “Then don’t ask me.” He never played the schmoozing game. He was not into that at all.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “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.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “I’ve always felt that work – learning from people who know more than I know – is what keeps you going.” ~ Lauren Bacall
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“You can’t always be a leading lady.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “The industry is s**t, it’s the medium that’s great.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “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.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “How long an actress lives professionally depends on her stamina, the extent of her masochism, her imagination, and her yearning for recognition or approval.” ~ Lauren Bacall Quotes
- “No, I don’t like legend. I mean, I don’t like the category. And to begin with, to me, a legend is something that is not on the Earth, that is dead” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “The biggest misconception people have about me is that I’m in control of every situation. I’m rarely in control of any situation.” ~ Lauren Bacall
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“I am not a wealthy woman. I wish to hell I was, but I never had a wealthy man.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “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…” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “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].” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “[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.” ~ Lauren Bacall
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“I am essentially a loner.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “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.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “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.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “I have made mistakes in the past and been in movies that really weren’t good, and that I needed the money at the time, or something — and the money wasn’t even that great. But I needed it, and… they come back on television, those movies… to haunt you. And it’s a nightmare!” ~ Lauren Bacall
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“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.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “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.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “God if the press ever quoted anyone correctly it would be brilliant.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “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 revealed in that.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “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.” ~ Lauren Bacall
- “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.”” ~ Lauren Bacall
