“Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas! / You really are beautiful! Pearls, / harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins!”

“I have, for my own projected works and ideas, only the silliest and dewiest of hopes; no matter what, I am romantic enough or sentimental enough to wish to contribute something to life’s fabric, to the world’s beauty.... [S]imply to live does not justify existence, for life is a mere gesture on the surface of the earth, and death a return to that from which we had never been wholly separated; but oh to leave a trace, no matter how faint, of that brief gesture! For someone, some day, may find it beautiful!”

“oh god it’s wonderful to get out of bed and drink too much coffee and smoke too many cigarettes and love you so much”

“It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.I admire you, beloved, for the trap you've set. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.”

“life perpetuated in parti-colored loves and beautiful lies all in different languages.”

“Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern.”

“Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!) Lana Turner has collapsed!I was trotting along and suddenlyit started raining and snowingand you said it was hailingbut hailing hits you on the headhard so it was really snowing andraining and I was in such a hurryto meet you but the trafficwas acting exactly like the skyand suddenly I see a headlineLANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!there is no snow in Hollywoodthere is no rain in CaliforniaI have been to lots of partiesand acted perfectly disgracefulbut I never actually collapsedoh Lana Turner we love you get up”