At one time I used to keep notebooks with outlines for stories. But I found doing this somehow deadened the idea in my imagination. If the notion is good enough, if it truly belongs to you, then you can't forget it-it will haunt you till it's written.

The instant she saw the letter she squinted her eyes and bent her lips in a tough tiny smile that advanced her age immeasurably. "Darling," she instructed me, "would you reach in the drawer there and give me my purse. A girl doesn't read this sort of thing without her lipstick.

[Y]outh is hardly human: it can't be, for the young never believe they will die...especially would they never believe that death comes, and often, in forms other than the natural one.

The only obligation any artist can have is to himself. His work means nothing, otherwise. It has no meaning.

Jay Sebring cut my hair a couple of times.

I would have liked to have known Oscar Wilde because I think he must have been very amusing and entertaining.

I am a completely horizontal author. I can't think unless I'm lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch.