I mean it's very hard to meditate and live a spiritual life in America. People think you're a freak if you try to.

They didn't act like people and they didn't act like actors. It's hard to explain. They acted more like they knew they were celebrities and all. I mean they were good, but they were too good.

But I was afraid of the questions (much more than the accusations) you might both put to me.

The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I'm not kidding

I submit that Zooey's face was close to being a wholly beautiful face. As such, it was of course vulnerable to the same variety of glibly undaunted and usually specious evaluations that any legitimate art object is. I think it just remains to be said that any one of a hundred everyday menaces — a car accident, a head cold, a lie before breakfast — could have disfigured or coarsened his bounteous good looks in a day or a second.

The cards are stacked (quite properly, I imagine) against all professional aesthetes, and no doubt we all deserve the dark, wordy, academic deaths we all sooner or later die.

I don't know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn't make you happy.