She clung to that which had robbed her, as people do.

So the only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost. All the wrong environment will do is run his blood pressure up; he will spend more time being frustrated or outraged. My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.

In the South you are ashamed of being a virgin. Boys. Men. They lie about it. Because it means less to women, Father said. He said it was men invented virginity not women. Father said it's like death: only a state in which the others are left and I said, But to believe it doesn't matter and he said, That's what's so sad about anything: not only virginity and I said, Why couldn't it have been me and not her who is unvirgin and he said, That's why that's sad too; nothing is even worth the changing of it.

To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.

I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it.

Everything in Los Angeles is too large, too loud and usually banal in concept… The plastic asshole of the world.

I know now that what makes a fool is an inability to take even his own good advice.