Eve Babitz

When she smiled, her perfect white teeth slashed the air with sudden beauty, giving her a glow of confidence that smacked of rude invincibility.

All three rooms looked straight out into a horizon of blue, gray, green Pacific with sunsets blazing orange in summer and glowing pink in winter.

‘Truth is like old brandy; it should only be brought out late at night among close friends.’

The white flowers threw Max’s elegant silhouette into a sort of bas-relief, like Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise, in Florence, golden. The sunshine was golden. The cigarette smoke and coffee smelled golden.

Max’s laugh was like a dragnet; it picked up every living laugh within the vicinity and shined a light on it, intensified it, pitched it higher.

Her heart still turned four golden beats whenever he stayed late and the sun would shine a certain way across his profile.

And he could tell her anything: boring things about what he’d been doing—only she didn’t get bored, she just liked the sound of his voice.

She couldn’t believe that there were some experiences in life one cannot afford. The idea that something was beyond one’s means was preposterous—

In the cab going into Manhattan, though, she allowed herself to inhale the skyscrapers across the East River, looking so empty and silent at 7 a.m. in the clear morning sun glaze. Already she felt the bristling of desire come flooding through her veins.

Hemingway, in his typical grandiose way, said that courage was grace under pressure.