Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen Quotes

“Fiona’s annual visits were like a tornado, leaving a trail of shuttered shows in its wake.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“No, being a playwright half an hour before curtain is like being tied to the tracks of an oncoming train. Everyone’s about to discover you’re a hack, and it’s too late to do anything about it now.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“Not that,” said June. “I’m not making another movie where I play a sexy Asian lady on a beach—fuck no. She meant Altogether Too Many Murders.” She took a drag on her cigarette. “Good title. Has a ring of truth to it.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“Not according to my morality clause,” Devlin replied. “This whole room could study that morality clause! Who let me make a multi-million-dollar motion picture with a bunch of fairies, Commies, and Chinese?”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“You already look awful. Your hair isn’t done; your dress doesn’t fit. If you walk in this heat, it’ll only be worse.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“No,” I said. “I’m being set up. The head of Pacific Pictures and his weasel of a secretary killed her, and now they’ve arranged for me to take the fall.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“Hey, relax. ‘Everything’s my fault’ is just narcissism for pessimists; I should know. I screwed up too. Henry and I never thought that note would make the police reopen Fiona’s case. All we wanted was for everyone to butt out, not turn on each other.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“Can we go out for a cigarette now?” He sighed. “I don’t feel like revealing my deepest secrets while Mickey fucking Rooney plays the drums.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“It all counts, Annie,” he said. “Drunk, drugged, horny, sad, lonely—the mistakes all count.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“Henry and Victor had killed Fiona because she’d intended to reveal their secret, the best way to figure out how they had done it—it seemed to me—was to let them think I was writing the same article. And see if they managed to kill me.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“had all bought it because it made sense. Jack had tried and failed to be a novelist, and June had tried and failed to be taken seriously, and Terry had tried and failed to be an actress, and I had tried and failed to be a mystery writer.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“message was clear: I was a failure in New York and a failure out here. It was time to pack in my dreams and give up.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“movie—that’s swell,” Jack said. “I like movies. They’re like plays with no ambition.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“See, this is why we don’t like you. I tell you to your face, openly, that I dislike you, and all I get back is polite conversation. Be a man, Don. Fight back.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“I don’t jump to anything,” said Jack. “I get blackout drunk and then stumble backward into conclusions, knocking them over so they shatter into a million pieces.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“don’t want you leave,” he replied. “But I also don’t want you to stay. And whichever you pick, I’m going to resent you for it. Aren’t I charming? Now you see why I can’t keep the women off me.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“and I wondered for one brief, cruel moment what kind of woman took the time to freshen up her lipstick before heading to the police station after her friends had been attacked in their homes.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“No one else made sense. But only twenty-four hours earlier, I’d been snug on a couch with those four, feeling a level of bliss I hadn’t felt since, well, the morning of March 20, four and a half months ago, before Beverly and Adam extinguished the entire future I had planned for myself.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“I’m not accusing you. I’m choosing not to have an opinion,” Victor interrupted. “I’m done with all of this. Speculating about who killed Fiona, snooping around her effects. I’m not participating anymore. It’s leading down a road I don’t want to be on.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“Sixty-year-olds don’t murder people,” June explained, as if this were the most obvious fact in the world. “How can a man’s blood run hot enough for murder if he can’t get an erection?”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“I almost had to marry Joan Crawford to get out of that one.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“That’s nothing,” said Jack. “She once said listening to a song written by Vic was like hearing a drunk on a bus try to hum a song written by Henry.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“She once said I was so dedicated to drinking that soon I’d be brain-dead enough to finally be successful as a film actor,”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“Hi, Annie,” she said. “Are you working on this train wreck now too?” “No,” I answered. “Just”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“Everyone does,” he replied. “They’re not at home, Fiona’s friends. They’re all here, their whole little club. Your whole little club. Spent hours holed up in Terry’s office, discussing the fate of the production schedule of the picture that’s launching my film career—which you’d think I’d have a say on, especially when she was my friend too.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“June is such a child,” Fiona muttered to me. I could still feel anger radiating off her. “Can you imagine being the sexiest woman in Hollywood and complaining that no one wants to see you play Lady Macbeth?”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“It’s not my fault you’re a bad actress,” Fiona snapped. “It’s not my fault you’ve done nothing interesting, said nothing interesting, thought nothing interesting. Maybe men only see you as a pretty face because there’s nothing else there to see.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“I never wanted to be this: Recognized. A pretty face only, a thing men want to possess. I wanted to be serious. I wanted to be a real actress—”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“She brings the mood down a little, no?” I remarked. “It seemed like she upset you a bit there.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen

“Somewhere around the fourth drink, as the sun began to set and cast an orange glow around my blank white living room, I realized I was lonely. For four months I had felt next to nothing, in a depressive haze of smoke and apathy.”
― Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen