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
When a person who is very ill decides to treat it like a slight virus, you play that game. If you make a big scene, I think it is yourself you are doing it for, not the person who’s ill. – 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
I’ve always felt that work – learning from people who know more than I know – is what keeps you going. – 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
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. – Lauren Bacall
In actual fact, I’ve never been one, even from childhood, to kind of analyze myself very much. – Lauren Bacall
The big rule is that you must never get mixed up with a married man – never even look sideways at another woman’s fella. Boy, I really was terrific at obeying that rule, wasn’t I? – Lauren Bacall
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. – Lauren Bacall
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. – Lauren Bacall
I wasn’t brought up as a society girl to go to balls and be a debutante and marry the social set and money and go to parties. No one in my family lived like that. And I never wanted to live like that. I was brought up to believe in work. I always wanted a career. Always. – Lauren Bacall
You learn to rise above a lot of bad things that happen in your life. And you have to keep going. – Lauren Bacall
I loved reading Grimm’s fairy tales and Hans Christian Andersen, and I loved to dream about other worlds and other lives. Maybe that has something to do with having an incomplete family, being an only child. All I know is I loved to pretend, and all that was in tandem with my wanting to be an actress. – Lauren Bacall
In Hollywood, an equitable divorce settlement means each party getting fifty percent of publicity. – Lauren Bacall
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. – 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
