Lauren Bacall

You can't always be a leading lady.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

We live in an age of mediocrity.

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.

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

I wish Frank Sinatra would just shut up and sing.

A woman isn't complete without a man. But where do you find a man - a real man - these days?

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.

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

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

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.