“For two extraordinary years I have been working on it - learning to write - but mostly learning how to tell the truth. At first it is quite impossible. You make yourself better than anybody, then worse than anybody, and when you finally come to see you are 'like' everybody - that is the bitterest blow of all to the ego. But in the end it is only the truth, no matter how ugly or shameful, that is right, that fits together, that makes real people, and strangely enough - beauty...”

“Little lies that make people feel better are not bad, like thanking someone for a meal they made even if you hated it, or telling a sick person they look better when they don't, or someone with a hideous new hat that it's lovely. But to yourself you must tell the truth”

“I have been taking stock of my 50 years since I left Wichita in 1922 at the age of 15 to become a dancer with Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. How I have existed fills me with horror. For I have failed in everything -- spelling, arithmetic, riding, tennis, golf; dancing, singing, acting; wife, mistress, whore, friend. Even cooking.And I do not excuse myself with the usual escape of 'not trying.' I tried with all my heart.”

“Most beautiful dumb girls think they are smart and get away with it, because other people, on the whole, aren't much smarter.”

“It was a truth that invaded her, like a dark disease, a truth too painful to talk about. And I was beginning to wonder if all I was doing was making it worse.”

“Better to accept the wretched truth than struggle, twisting to make a wish a reality.”

“If you are always frightened for yourself you can't act, and then life loses its purpose. You just have to tell yourself that, when you get right down to it, you don't matter all that much.”