L.A. Woman Quotes

“But you know so many men,” Ophelia said, “isn’t there even one for you?” “They’re all adjectives,” I said, “they all make me feel modified; even a word like girl friend gives me this feeling I’ve been cut in half. I’d rather just be a car, not a blue car or a big one, than sit there the rest of my life being stuck with some adjective.”
― Eve Babitz, L.A.WOMAN

“She was sure she wasn’t ever going to go Hollywood, so she went.”
― Eve Babitz, L.A.WOMAN

“ONE SUMMER MORNING while I was still a virgin though my virginity was on its last legs, I woke up and didn’t want to go to New Jersey.”
― Eve Babitz, L.A.WOMAN

“going anyplace outside L.A. Just bothering to go someplace other than Santa Monica was incomprehensible when I could just wake up every morning at dawn, yank on my bathing suit still on the floor from the night before when I’d yanked it off, hurry down to Hollywood and Gower to catch the 91S bus down Hollywood Boulevard and then Santa Monica Boulevard to Beverly Hills and transfer to the 83 going straight out to the beach untilfinally there I’d be, at 8:00 A.M. or so, able to feel the cool sand get warm as the morning sun glazed over the tops of the palm trees up on the palisades while waves of the ocean crashed down day after day so anyone could throw himself into the tides and bodysurf throughout eternity.”
― Eve Babitz, L.A.WOMAN

“Most addicts kill themselves by just trying to get some sleep.”
― Eve Babitz, L.A.WOMAN

“Robert said, “How can you waste your time on something that won’t make money?” “Didn’t you used to write plays?” I asked.”
― Eve Babitz, L.A.WOMAN

“Mountain climbing—in those days, all you had to do in Hollywood was go outside to go mountain climbing—was Lola’s idea of where to take boyfriends and get pregnant and by the time she was nineteen she’d had three gold medals for violin state champion and four abortions, her life having finally, I suppose, proven that you can’t go around being an L.A. woman and expect society not to notice when your bowing begins to sound a little off—not screechy, naturally but, well, she simply wasn’t gold medal material finally, and they gave her a silver one, second prize.”
― Eve Babitz, L.A.WOMAN

“Suddenly our particular trance turned into a monarch butterfly and everybody knew just how to make it look real. Though irrevocable loss did cling since it was only a movie.”
― Eve Babitz, L.A. Woman