You have to be willing to get happy about nothing.

In the early days of film, fans used to idolize a whole star - they would take one star and love everything about that star ... Today people can idolize a star in one area and forget about him in another. A big rock star might sell millions and millions of records, but then if he makes a bad movie ... forget it.

The girls in California were probably prettier in a standard sense than the New York girls--blonder and in better health, I guess; but I still preferred the way the girls in New York looked--stranger and more neurotic (a girl always looked more beautiful and fragile when she was about to have a nervous breakdown).

I think an artist is anybody who does something well, like if you cook well.

The childlike, gum-chewing naivete, the glamour rooted in despair, the self-admiring carelessness, the perfected otherness, the wispiness, the shadowy, voyeuristic, vaguely sinister aura, the pale, soft-spoken magical presence, the skin and bones . . .

I never fall apart, because I never fall together.

You have to be willing to get happy about nothing.