“The United States was the creation of men who believed that each man has the right to do what he wants with his life as long as he does not interfere with his neighbor’s pursuit of happiness (that his neighbor’s idea of happiness is persecuting others does confuse matters a bit).”
 
Gore Vidal, Gore Vidal’s United States, Essays 1952-1992

“In Los Angeles, you can get by without your honor, but not without your car.”
 
Pauline Kael, Review of Sunset Boulevard

“Shouldn’t a boy live a little before he settles for mere wisdom, solitude, dedication, and the desert of inner life?”
 
Gavin Lambert, Norman’s Letter

“People are always talking about who will be the new Brooke Astor, the new Queen of Society. With all due respect to Mrs. Astor, I think what New York Society really needs is a new Diana Vreeland, someone who knows that in matters of style and social life originality is as important as propriety, as essential as taste, openness as desirable as exclusivity.”
 
Bob Colacello, Bright Young Things

Photo Credit: Diana Vreeland: Immoderate Style

On the menu at El Morocco: Elsie de Wolfe and Ina Claire with a side of the dashing Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

Photograph by Jerome Zerbe, El Morocco's Family Album

As Duff pursued a career in politics, it was incumbent upon Diana to keep them in the style to which she had been accustomed. She did so by becoming an actress. Over the next ​twelve she endured long separations from Duff as she traversed the globe performing in Max Reinhardt’s much heralded show, The Miracle. 
​
Unlike some love marriages, Duff and Diana’s did not fade with age. They remained devoted even though Duff took many mistresses, which he chronicled in his (now published) diaries. One of the rare heterosexual men who truly appreciated the feminine sex, he attracted the most glamorous women in Paris. Among his conquests were Daisy Fellowes, Louise de Vilmorin, and Susan Mary Alsop (by whom he had a son). The early-marriage dalliances Diana minded very much, but the later ones, not so much. In fact, Diana's motus operandi was to become close friends with her husband's lovers, which prompted the sharp-tongued Duchess of Windsor to quip she herself “would never have an affair with Duff because it would mean having Diana around the house day and night being nice" to her.

Photo Credit: ​Society in Vogue

The outbreak of World War II brought an influx of European refugees to New York City. One of them was the teenage Pamela Mountbatten, a royal cousin who would go on to marry the English designer David Hicks. The threat of a Nazi invasion posed a particular hazard for her branch of the Mountbatten family; matriarch Edwina was of partial Jewish descent. As such, the Mountbattens gratefully accepted New York grand dame Grace Vanderbilt's offer to act as Pamela's guardian for the duration of the war. Thus, Pamela was shipped to the relative safety of New York. 

​As Pamela was later to relate in her memoir, Daughter of Empire: My Life as a Mountbatten, she was protected not only from the Nazis but also from culture while she sheltered at Mrs. Vanderbilt's palatial 640 Fifth Avenue residence. On one occasion, Mrs. Vanderbilt hosted a dinner party that posed a scheduling conflict with a Royal Shakespeare Company performance. “A young man at her table [thus] apologized and asked whether he might be excused from the table because he was going to see Hamlet. Mrs. Vanderbilt looked slightly nonplussed and so he explained, 'Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,' whereupon her face lit up and she exclaimed loudly so that everyone could hear, 'Oh, do give the dear boy my good wishes. I knew his father so well.'"

Photo Credit: The Vanderbilt Feud, The Fabulous Story of Grace Wilson Vanderbilt

Zelda Fitzgerald was not only her husband's muse, she was a gifted illustrator. Below is her draft proposal for The Beautiful and Damned dust jacket, alongside the William E. Hill illustration that was eventually selected for the American first edition.

Zelda's dust jacket rendering, as well as other works of art by her are included in the excellent coffee table book, The Romantic Egoists, A Pictorial Autobiography from the Scrapbooks and Albums of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

"It is difficult to write about love: I mean to live in the presence of it. You can run towards it and perhaps bump into it and you can watch it running away: but when it is there it is like two people coming face to face on a tightrope; they have to keep moving or they will fall; they would like to pass into [or] through one another; at moments this is possible! But then it is not.”

​Nicholas Mosley, Hopeful Monsters

From poetic to erotic, Nick Harvill Libraries has you covered: