Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, The Flesh, and L.A.

by Eve Babitz

I wonder if I’ll ever be able to have what I like or if my tastes are too various to be sustained by one of anything.

There’s no precedent for women getting their own “everything” and learning that it’s not the answer.

Once it is established that you are you and everyone else is merely perfect, ordinarily factory-like perfect . . . you can wreak all the havoc you want.

(My sister is now working on the question “How do you love someone and not take them personally; not care?” I told her that when she figured out the answer to tell me, and I promised not to tell anyone.)

I would tell everyone I knew what a LATE bastard he was and I would be so clever about it that the idea of being late would suddenly become the eighth deadly sin; it would be worse than gluttony or sloth—lateness.

That’s the trouble with Hollywood; the things that don’t exist are likely to kill you if you threaten them.