Yes, Louise Brooks was beautiful and intelligent, and she could be very funny, but obviously there was a deep insecurity there, a real destructive rage and immaturity.

This life is mine because of good luck. And because I reached out and took it.

I'm drawn to intergenerational tension, and it must have been strong in the 1920s: I wondered how Louise's [Brooks] generation of flappers appeared to the women who came of age at the beginning of the century - wearing corsets, long skirts, and high collars.

Worrying was painful .... but compared to the alternative, a privilege

I learned a lot of details about 1920s clothes, cars, kitchen appliances, and food. I had a character eating peanut butter in one scene until I learned that peanut butter wasn't commercially packaged and sold until 1924.

Someone needs to give the Pope thirteen babies. Just for a week or so. See how he likes no birth control then.

It's like swimming, underwater, this whole year. I just close my eyes. hold my breath, and keep kicking.