I can't talk about Hollywood. It was a horror to me when I was there and it's a horror to look back on. I can't imagine how I did it. When I got away from it I couldn't even refer to the place by name. ''Out there,'' I called it.

When you have to apologize, it is well, I suppose, to get the thing over quickly.

[When asked what was the inspiration for most of her work:] Need of money, dear.

Sure, you make money writing on the coast ... but that money is like so much compressed snow. It goes so fast it melts in your hand.

Guns aren't lawful; nooses give; gas smells awful. So you might as well live.

Perhaps it suddenly brought to us the sense of change. Or irresponsibility. But don't forget that, though the people in the twenties seemed like flops, they weren't. Fitzgerald, the rest of them, reckless as they were, drinkers as they were, they worked damn hard and all the time.

Then she told herself to stop her nonsense. If you looked for things to make you feel hurt and wretched and unnecessary, you were certain to find them, more easily each time, so easily, soon, that you did not even realize you had gone out searching. Women alone often developed into experts at the practice. She must never join their dismal league.