“Patricia Neal, an Oscar Winner Who Endured Tragedy, Dies at 84,” New York Times

When he is not working, he travels the globe, attends the San Francisco Symphony, listens to traditional jazz, collects German Expressionist graphics and watches old movies (his favorites are “Sunset Boulevard” and “Double Indemnity”).

“Distilling the same-sex marriage case,” Los Angeles Times

What is the point. That is what must be borne in mind. Sometimes the point is really who wants what. Sometimes the point is what is right or kind. Sometimes the point is a momentum, a fact, a quality, a voice, an intimation, a thing said or unsaid. Sometimes it’s who’s at fault, or what will happen if you do not move at once. The point changes and goes out. You cannot be forever watching for the point, or you lose the simplest thing: being a major character in your own life.

—Renata Adler, “Brownstone”

A lady lifted the lid of her toilet tank and found a small yachtsman, on the deck of his boat, in a bowl. They spoke of detergents. A man with fixed dentures bit into an apple. A lady in a crisis of choice phoned her friend from a market and settled for milk of magnesia. A hideous family pledged itself to margarine.

—Renata Adler, “Speedboat”

That “writers write” is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.

—Renata Adler, “Castling”

Walk the Angry Beach (1968)

The Go-Go’s (circa 1978)

At school, kids called her “Belimpa” and mocked her for having only one outfit. She dreamed of being Marcia Brady but obsessed over Charles Manson. This pull between light and dark continued through high school, where she was both a cheerleader and a shoplifter — not that those are necessarily opposites.

The rest of my review of Belinda Carlisle’s memoir is here.

“I have been to Hell and back and let me tell you it was wonderful.”

Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet (1986)