Randomness scares people. Religion is a way to explain randomness.
When I was young, boys didn’t type.
If you can stay in love for more than two years, you’re on something.
Romantic love is mental illness. But it’s a pleasurable one.
That I am totally devoid of sympathy for, or interest in, the world of groups is directly attributable to the fact that my two greatest needs and desires – smoking cigarettes and plotting revenge – are basically solitary pursuits.
I have the exact opposite problem of every writer I’ve ever met: Every writer I’ve ever met writes things that are too long, and they have to edit them down.
How do you know if your child is a writer? Your obstetrician holds his stethoscope to your abdomen and only hears excuses.
No one earns $100 million. You steal $100 million.
You should make it hard on yourself to write so you’re easier to read.
When I started publishing, I got offers to write for big magazines. But I would always say, “Well, it’s not that I don’t want to write for these big magazines, but you can’t edit it.”
Spilling your guts is just exactly as charming as it sounds.
Los Angeles is a large city-like area surrounding the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Once you go outside your natural audience, there are tons of people that don’t like you.
What starts love is your ability to stupefy and blind yourself to the point of being able to fall in love. What stops it is waking up.
Romantic love is mental illness. But it’s a pleasurable one. It’s a drug. It distorts reality, and that’s the point of it. It would be impossible to fall in love with someone that you really saw.
Special-interest publications should realize that if they are attracting enough advertising and readers to make a profit, the interest is not so special.
People always say “pop culture.” As if we have some high culture to distinguish it from.
By the time everyone catches up with you, you’re bored.
To me, O’Hara is the real Fitzgerald.
There’s no such thing as advice to the lovelorn. If they took advice, they wouldn’t be lovelorn.