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Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Lauren Bacall Quotes

I’m not tough, and I never have been. I suppose over the years I’ve built up kind of a veneer to protect myself because I have functioned on my own for a long, long time, and I have never had a lot of flunkies preceding me to clear the way.

– Lauren Bacall

Film is not a woman’s medium. If you weren’t the hottest kid in town, men stayed away from you.

– Lauren Bacall

Young people, even in Hollywood, ask me, ‘Were you really married to Humphrey Bogart?’ ‘Well, yes, I think I was,’ I reply.

– Lauren Bacall

It’s just a fact of life that I don’t think I’ve ever been taken particularly seriously in movies by movie makers. I don’t know why.

– Lauren Bacall

I was never my favourite subject.

– Lauren Bacall

God – if the press ever quoted anyone correctly, it would be brilliant.

– Lauren Bacall

My feeling about the movies is that most of them are terrible. If you don’t have a decent script and a decent director, forget it.

– Lauren Bacall

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.

– Lauren Bacall

I used to dream of being other places, other people. It was an escape for me.

– Lauren Bacall

For my peculiar face, I look best when I look as though I’m not wearing make-up.

– Lauren Bacall

You are welcoming to everyone when you’re a liberal. You do not have a small mind.

– Lauren Bacall

I was this kid, and I was scared to death of all these pros around me… My head would shake, and my hands would shake, and I discovered if I kept my head down and looked up, my head would not shake, so I started to do that when I could, when it was appropriate in a scene.

– Lauren Bacall

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

– Lauren Bacall

When I was a kid, it was Bette Davis. She was my idol. I used to cut school and sit in the back of the theater; of course, I would have snuck in because I couldn’t afford a ticket.

– Lauren Bacall

My mother was the greatest example to me of anyone I’ve ever known. She didn’t have an easy life. I adored her. She worked hard all her life, and she was the one who set my values. She was quite an amazing woman, although she wasn’t tough at all.

– Lauren Bacall

If I could have lived as an actress in any period, it would have been the 1920s – I would have loved to have been part of that speakeasy era.

– Lauren Bacall

Acting is a life of rejection.

– Lauren Bacall

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.

– Lauren Bacall

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