I am more stupid about some things than others; not equally stupid in all directions; I am not a well-rounded person.

Fidelity is for phonographs

I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that somber city – and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles.

It would not be practical for her to hate herself. Luckily, God sends a substitute, a husband.

I want to tell you, don't marry suffering. Some people do. They get married to it, and sleep and eat together, just as husband and wife. If they go with joy they think it's adultery.

When I didn't argue he was satisfied he had persuaded me, and was not the first to make that mistake.

In Los Angeles all the loose objects in the country were collected, as if America had been tilted and everything that wasn't tightly screwed down had slid into Southern California.