It shone on everyone, whether they had a contract or not. The most democratic thing I'd ever seen, that California sunshine.

You were the living image of the entire Platonic shadow show, an illusion that could fill my emptiness with marvellous, imaginary things as long as, just as long as, the movie lasted, and then all would all vanish.

All artists, they say, are a little mad. This madness is, to a certain extent, a self-created myth designed to keep the generality away from the phenomenally close-knit creative community. Yet, in the world of the artists, the consciously eccentric are always respectful and admiring if those who have the courage to be genuinely a little mad.

It is far easier for a woman to lead a blameless life than it is for a man; all she has to do is to avoid sexual intercourse like the plague.

Midnight, and the clock strikes. It is Christmas Day, the werewolves birthday, the door of the solstice still wide enough open to let them all slink through.

As for my father, few souls are less troubled. He can be simply pleased with us, pleased that we exist, and, from the vantage point of his wondrously serene old age, he contemplates our lives almost as if they were books he can dip into whenever he wants. His back pages, perhaps.

She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening. from "The Lady of the Haunted House