Lauren Bacall Quotes

We live in a crazily youth-orientated world nowadays. It's a trickle-down thing. We see pictures of lithe, attractive celebrity couples such as Brad and Angelina or the Beckhams cavorting around, covered in tattoos, stomachs as flat as the singing in early 'X Factor' rounds.

I can't do Los Angeles. I've always been the anti-Barbie. I don't want to be in a place where almost every woman walks around with puffy lips, little noses and breasts large enough to nourish a small country.

Society has made us believe you should look like an 18-year-old model all your life.

People put too much emphasis on looks.

There are three periods in life: youth, middle age and 'how well you look'.

I am very much against makeup and high heels and all that we inherit as 'beauty.'

Women must be freed from the idea that they always have to stay young and that they must disfigure themselves at a certain age.

I like tight bodies and pretty faces. You bring in Methuselah, if she's got a tight body and a pretty face, that's all right, too.

I really don't think you need to be 40 and have three kids and have a body of an 18-year-old.

At 49, you want people to think you are at least a decade younger, not a year older.

I think it frustrates me that so many people have bought into the idea of what we should look like instead of actually giving a crap about everyone around you.

As a young girl, I was much more preoccupied by my flaws. Everyone teased me because of my long, skinny neck. To hide my so-called deformity, I was wearing a turtleneck when I was 3! Yet my neck is probably my best asset. At the end of the day, what counts is the entire package.

If you don't look like an airbrushed model ... you have to look past it. You look how you look. What are you going to do?

We're not freaks, Tally. We're normal. We may not be gorgeous, but at least we're not hyped-up Barbie dolls.

What I want to know is: Why is it important to have visible stomach muscles? I grew up in an era (the Paleolithic) when people kept their stomach muscles discreetly out of sight.

Women are not forgiven for aging. Robert Redford's lines of distinction are my old-age wrinkles.

I'm Tally Youngblood. Make me pretty." -Tally Youngblood

What I hate most in life are people who are not really the peach of the day but who want to be young and sexy. You can fool nobody. There is a moment when you have to accept that somebody else is younger and fresher and hotter. Life is not a beauty contest.

It's not just women in film, 18-year-old girls feel pressure to do preventative injecting. I see someone's face, someone's body who has had children and I think, they're the song lines of your experience, and why would you want to eradicate that? I look at people sort of entombing themselves and all you see is their little pin holes of terror... and you think, just live your life, death is not going to be any easier just because your face can't move.

Our culture puts a lot of pressure on the idea that a woman's self-worth is defined by her looks. It's just awful. And they also put a tremendous premier on youth, which is so, so debilitating and upsetting to so many women. I don't know why they're so dopey. Seriously. I don't see any problem with that and if you do, you should celebrate it. Don't chop your face up.

You know I'm a firm believer that women come in all shapes and all sizes and you know certain people like certain things. It's all good, whether it's big, small, whatever.

I thought if I had straight hair and a perfect nose, my whole career would be different.

A woman’s beauty is supposed to be her grand project and constant insecurity. We’re meant to shellac our lips with five different glosses, but always think we’re fat. Beauty is Zeno’s paradox. We should endlessly strive for it, but it’s not socially acceptable to admit we’re there. We can’t perceive it in ourselves. It belongs to the guy screaming 'nice tits.

I was rejected in school because I didn't look like the big-breasted, beautiful girls. I was awkward and sad. My mother always said, "Be original!" but I didn't understand until I changed to be like everyone else.

Woman learns to hate to the extent to which her charms decrease.