Sometimes I'll leave the house and go to a delicatessen down the street from me - it's been there a million years - just because I can look at people.

Sometimes I'll leave the house and go to a delicatessen down the street from me - it's been there a million years - just because I can look at people.

You're grounded!!!! You can't go out and prowl the L.A. streets. You've got to do something more edifying, emboldening and altogether more groovy. You gots to stay home tonite and read a good book!!!!!!!!!!

Where’s your sketch pad?” I asked. … “I gave that up,” Kay said. “I wasn’t very good, so I changed my major.” “To what?” “To pre-med, then psychology, then English lit, then history.” “I like a woman who knows what she wants.” Kay smiled. “So do I, but I don’t know any.

"War gives men a plain-and-simple something to do ... Women write diaries in the hope that their words will beckon fate." It's a romantic manifesto.

I think the great unspoken theme in noir fiction is male self-pity. It pervades noir movies.

I don't want to recover from writing this book [The Onion]. I feel very poised. I feel like I'm with my mother for the first time ever. I feel like I've confronted her, and the confrontation goes on.