  We refine the classical Cauchy--Schwartz inequality $\|X\|_{1} \leq
\|X\|_{2}$ by demonstrating that for any $p$ and $q$ with $q>p>2$, there exists
a constant $C=C(p,q)$ such that $\|X\|_1 \leq 1 - C \Big{(}\|X\|_p^p -
1\Big{)}^{\frac{q-2}{q-p}}\Big{(}\|X\|_q^q - 1\Big{)}^{\frac{2-p}{q-p}}$ holds
true for all Borel measurable random variables $X$ with $\|X\|_{2}=1$ and
$\|X\|_{p}<\infty$. We illustrate two applications of this result: one for
biased Rademacher sums and another for exponential sums.
