Time & Perspective Quote by Lauren Bacall

Bacall’s line lands with the cool snap of someone who’s watched the party curdle and isn’t pretending it still tastes good. “Screw around” is doing double duty: it’s sexual, sure, but it’s also a whole worldview of perpetual adolescence, the cult of the unserious man who treats life like an endless afterparty. Her dismissal - “which interests me not at all” - isn’t prudish; it’s fatigue weaponized into taste. She’s not condemning pleasure. She’s refusing boredom.

The sharpest move is the switch from “they’re guys” to “we.” Bacall doesn’t pose as morally above the mess. “God knows we’ve done that” reads like a wink and a confession, a reminder that glamour, youth, and Hollywood’s permissive chaos were once part of her own mythology. Then comes the hard pivot: “been there.” Three words that turn experience into authority. She’s claiming seniority over the very men still auditioning for a life she’s already outgrown.

Context matters: Bacall’s star persona was built on sophistication, low-voiced control, and a refusal to play the wide-eyed ingenue for long. In an industry that monetizes women’s youth and tolerates men’s eternal boyhood, this sounds like boundary-setting as cultural critique. The subtext is practical and bracing: maturity isn’t a mood; it’s a choice, and she’s done subsidizing someone else’s refusal to grow up.