Love is the hardest thing in the world to write about. So simple. You've got to catch it through details, like the early morning sunlight hitting the gray tin of the rain spout in front of her house. The ringing of a telephone that sounds like Beethoven's "Pastoral." A letter scribbled on her office stationery that you carry around in your pocket because it smells of all the lilacs in Ohio.

Ah, Marilyn, Hollywood's Joan of Arc, our Ultimate Sacrificial Lamb. Well, let me tell you, she was mean, terribly mean. The meanest woman I have ever known in this town. I am appalled by this Marilyn Monroe cult. Perhaps it's getting to be an act of courage to say the truth about her. Well, let me be courageous. I have never met anyone as utterly mean as Marilyn Monroe. Nor as utterly fabulous on the screen, and that includes Garbo.

They've tried to manufacture other Marilyn Monroes and they will undoubtedly keep trying. But it won't work. She was an original.

I'm delighted with it, because it used to be that films were the lowest form of art. Now we've got something to look down on.

[about the Hotel Marmont on Sunset Blvd., a piece of Hollywood history] I would rather sleep in a bathroom than in another hotel.

My English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop Tutu.

I hate that word. It's return--a return to the millions of people who've never forgiven me for deserting the screen.