The California cemeteries make dying sound so attractive it's a real effort to keep breathing.

Hollywood, we decided, was a nice place to die, but we wouldn't want to live there.

Son of Lady Chatterley's Lover had obvious commercial advantages (as a title for this book), but it impugned the marital status of my parents, something that enough critics were already doing.

It was plain to see the Hollywood undertakers take care of everything. If you die you don't have to lift a finger.

We were ensconced as guests of the exclusive Beverly Hilton Hotel, an edifice so swank that the fire ax in the hall outside our suite said: "In case of fire-break crystal."

Then there was the time in Hollywood when I sat down in a breakaway chair and it collapsed on me. I was nearly knocked out and might have been even more seriously hurt but my fall was broken by the smog.

... Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, two publications read more faithfully in Hollywood than the Koran is in Mecca.

Disneyland is such a big thing to Californians, I discovered that when you cross the border you have to raise your right hand and take an oath that you believe in Walt Disney.

The only non-believer I encountered was Oscar Levant who wouldn't visit Disneyland because he said he had his own hallucinations.