For my peculiar face, I look best when I look as though I'm not wearing make-up.
Lauren BacallRead
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.
Interpretation
Experiences in youth hold a unique significance that can't be replicated in later life.
Lauren Bacall reflects on the unparalleled nature of first experiences, particularly during youth. She suggests that while early events, such as first love or success, are incredibly fortunate and impactful, they also establish a sense of nostalgia, as the depth of those feelings cannot be matched in subsequent occurrences. This highlights the fleeting beauty and uniqueness of life's initial moments.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of cherishing youth, one could use this quote to illustrate the significance of early experiences.
For my peculiar face, I look best when I look as though I'm not wearing make-up.
I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There are more important things in life than winning or losing a game.
I want to go everywhere, look at and listen to everything. You can go crazy with some of the wonderful stuff there is in life.
The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle.
At 20, 25, 30, we begin to realise that the possibilities of escape are getting fewer. We have jobs, children, partners, debts. This is the part of us to which literary fiction speaks.
One ship drives east and another drives west With the selfsame winds that blow. Tis the set of the sails And not the gales Which tells us the way to go. Like the winds of the seas are the ways of fate, As we voyage along through the life: Tis the set of a soul That decides its goal, And not the calm or the strife.
Actresses can get outrageously precious about the way they look. That's not what life's about. If you starve yourself to the point where your brain cells shrivel, you will never do good work. And if you're overly conscious of your arms flapping in the wind, how can you look the other actor in the eye to respond to them?
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