“I tried to be a good wife. I tried to be any kind of wife; the plain fact is, I just wasn’t meant to ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after.”
 
Ava Gardner, Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations

“The best things about Slim were her gift for total friendship, her original, inquiring mind, her great sense of fun, her willingness to accept her friends as they were without judging them. She never pushed, she just said what she thought—you could take it or leave it. She was loyal and she was funny.”
 
Lauren Bacall, By Myself

Image Credit: Slim: Memories of a Rich and Imperfect Life

“Do you think it’s possible to ever see the past as it actually was? We look back through the lens of what we know now, so we’re not seeing it as the people we were, we’re seeing it as the people we are, and that means the past has been radically altered.”
 
Ann Patchett, The Dutch House: A Novel

“Up till [Stonewall] we had all thought that homosexuality was a medical term. Suddenly we saw that we could be a minority group—with rights, a culture, an agenda. June 28, 1969, was a big date in gay history.”
 
Edmund White, City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s

Image Credit: Rhododendrites

“Sam had taken the name Goldwyn some years before. It happened when he was in partnership with Edgar Selwyn. He just took the first syllable of [of his original last name] Goldfish and the last syllable of Selwyn and concocted his new name. I’ve always felt it was a good thing that it wasn’t Selwyn who had the urge to change his name. He could have taken the first syllable of his name and the last syllable of Goldfish’s last name and he would have been Selfish.”
 
Mervyn LeRoy, Mervyn LeRoy: Take One

A copy of Mervyn LeRoy: Take One signed by Mervyn LeRoy is available via the Nick Harvill Libraries store.

Image Credit: UCLA Digital Library

“With Pablo, as it had been with my father, I had to be very careful to show enough intelligence to hold my own turf but never succumb to the temptation of showing too much.”
 
Françoise Gilot, Matisse and Picasso: A Friendship in Art

A copy of Matisse and Picasso: A Friendship in Art signed by Françoise Gilot is available via the Nick Harvill Libraries store. 

Image Credit: ​Matisse and Picasso: A Friendship in Art

​“There's so much beauty in the world. I suppose that's what got me into trouble in the first place.”
 
Howard Brookner, via Brad Gooch, Smash Cut: A Memoir of Howard & Art & the ‘70s & the ‘80s  

Photo Courtesy of MiguelAlanCS

“It is such a relief that Francis [Bacon] has turned out to be a success because he’d make a truly terrible failure.”
 
Stephen Spender, A House in St Johns Wood

Image Credit: The Best of Beaton

“Sleep, I’d discovered, is, when you’re young, an express train. When you’re old, it’s a local.”
 
Andrew Holleran, The Kingdom of Sand

Image Credit: National Archives at College Park

“Part of me is sorry I became a public utility.”
 
Elizabeth Taylor, via Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit and Glamour of an Icon