A movie star is not an artist, he is an art object.

The current moguls understand that true media power lies not in firing up our outrage, as Hearst did, but in befuddling it or tranquilizing it with new toys. The idea is to render us passive so that they can exercise their power to sell us a bunch of stuff we mostly don't need and mostly don't want.

Luck always favors the comely.

Divorced, not loving their abandoned children as much as they loathe their former wives, directing a combination of need and hostility toward the women who drift in and out of their new lives, they are, as [one character] puts it, involved in a variety of pharmaceutical experiments.

He who does not like you will defame you in jest.

Memory is the personal journalism of the soul.