I Am Alive, He Says To Himself,

The Landscape, Like Los Angeles Itself, Is Transitional. Impermanence Haunts The City, With Its Mushroom Industries--the Aircraft Perpetually Becoming Obsolete, The Oil Which Must One Day Be Exhausted, The Movies Which Fill America's Theatres For Six Months And Are Forgotten. Many Of Its Houses--especially The Grander Ones--have A Curiously Disturbing Atmosphere, A Kind Of Psychological Dankness Which Smells Of Anxiety, Overdrafts, Uneasy Lust, Whisky, Divorce And Lies.

These Books Have Not Made George Nobler Or Better Or More Truly Wise. It Is Just That He Likes Listening To Their Voices, The One Or The Other, Acording To His Mood. He Misuses Them Quite Ruthlessly - Despite The Respectful Way He Has To Talk About Them In Public - To Put Him To Bed, To Take His Mind Off The Hands Of The Clock, To Relax The Nagging Of His Pyloric Spasm, To Gossip Him Out Of His Melancholy, To Trigger The Conditioned Reflexes Of His Colon.

I Often Feel That Worse Than The Most Fiendish Nazis Were Those Germans Who Went Along With The Persecution Of The Jews Not Because They Really Disliked Them But Because It Was The Thing.

Hollywood's Two Polar Types Are The Cynically Drunken Writer Aggressively Nursing A Ten-year-old Reputation And The Theatrically Self-conscious Hermit Who Strides The Boulevard In Sandals, Home-made Shorts And A Prophetic Beard, Muttering Against The Age Of The Machines.

The Quito Telephone Service Is About As Reliable As Roulette.