Ah, Los Angeles! Dust and fog of your lonely streets, I am no longer lonely. Just you wait, all of you ghosts of this room, just you wait, because it will happen, as sure as there's a God in heaven.

Like my father, I am very impatient. I have a strong bullshit detector. I may finish one book in twenty that I have started.

So it happened at last: I was about to become a thief, a cheap milk-stealer. Here was your lash-in-the-pen genius, your one story-writer: a thief.

Arturo Bandini: -What does happiness mean to you Camilla? Camilla: -That you can fall in love with whoever you want to, and not feel ashamed of it.

Ask the dust on the road! Ask the Joshua trees standing alone where the Mojave begins. Ask them about Camilla Lopez, and they will whisper her name.

(...) I let go, crying and unable to stop because God was such a dirty crook, contemptible skunk, that's what he was for doing that thing to that woman. Come down out of the skies, you God, come on down and I'll hammer your face all over the city of Los Angeles, you miserable unpardonable prankster. If it wasn't for you, this woman would not have been so maimed, and neither would the world, (...)

For your information, a good novel can change the world. Keep that in mind before you attempt to sit down at a typewriter. Never waste time on something you don't believe in yourself.