Lauren Bacall on Lauren Bacall: ‘Imagination is the highest kite that can fly’

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Excerpts from Lauren Bacall’s 1978 memoir, “By Myself”:

LIFE LESSONS

“I have learned that I am a valuable person. I have made mistakes — so many mistakes. And will make more. Big ones. But I pay. They are my own. … I remain as vulnerable, romantic and idealistic as I was at 15, sitting in a movie theatre, watching, being Bette Davis.”

BETTE DAVIS

“(Bette Davis) was my 15-year-old idea of perfection — fine actress, dramatic bravery, doomed tragedy, sardonic wit — all an actress should be, and when I cut school I would sit all day in a movie house sobbing through ‘Dark Victory’ or ‘Jezebel’ or ‘The Old Maid,’ smoking in the balcony (I paid for a whole package, so I had to finish it).”

FALLING IN LOVE

“Each time I was in love — this was it. The hunger to belong. Imagination is the highest kite that can fly. When you have nothing but dreams, that’s all you think about, all that matters, all that takes you away from humdrummery. … Dreams were better — that was where my hope lay — I’d hang on to them, never let go. They were my own.”

HUMPHREY BOGART

“There was no way Bogie and I could be in the same room without reaching for one another, and it just wasn’t physical. Physical was very strong, but it was everything — heads, hearts, bodies, everything going at the same time.”

AFTER BOGART’S 1957 DEATH

“I was breathing, but there was no life in me. I couldn’t think of the future, I could only think of the man I had lost — the man who’d given me everything, taught me about people and living, with whom I had found my way of life.”