Quotes from Lauren Bacall

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

To fly as fast as thought, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived.

I fairly often have thought how lucky I was. I knew everybody because I was married to Bogie, and that 25-year difference was the most fantastic thing for me to have in my life.

We live in an age of mediocrity.

Imagination is the highest kite that can fly.

I don't consider myself a great actress. I'm just trying to stay alive, actually. I think I'm good, and I've learned a lot, certainly, mostly in the theater. I've been sloughed off movies for years. But what can you do? That's life.

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.

Isn't hope an incredible, a wonderfully demented thing?

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.

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

That was my original dream, anyway, to be on stage. I think the stage is an actor's place because actors, it belongs to you.