As one went to Europe to see the living past, so one must visit Southern California to observe the future.

America has a history of political isolation and economic self-sufficiency; its citizens have tended to regard the rest of the world as a disaster area from which lucky or pushy people emigrate to the Promised Land.

We can lie in the language of dress or try ot tell the truth; but unless we are naked and bald, it is impossible to be silent.

Nature can seem cruel, but she balances her books.

Other wars end eventually in victory, defeat or exhaustion, but the war between men and women goes on forever.

We say something every morning when we decide how to dress.

But I think that sometimes, when one's behaved like a rather second-rate person, the way I did at breakfast, then in a kind of self-destructive shock one goes and does something really second-rate. Almost as if to prove it.