I went out into the world when I was about 22. I wrote books and I illustrated books and did book covers, and I taught tap-dancing, and I was a model in the art school. I had no ability for any of those things, but what else could I do?

For flavor, instant sex will never supersede the stuff you have to peel and cook.

No effort is required to define or even attain happiness, but enormous concentration is needed to abandon everything else.

I had a friend who had two degrees of being made up: when invited I would say 'Can I make up?' and he would say 'Oh yes - tinted?', or he would say, 'Oh yes - clotted?'

Most men when they make up their faces, the makeup stands forward, and their faces are behind.

All this cut-price transcendentalism does not prevent California from being a startlingly physical state. This becomes most obvious where Los Angeles saunters down to the sea. The region is called Venice.

For an introvert his environment is himself and can never be subject to startling or unforeseen change.