success in L.A. is completely arbitrary. One day you're the brilliant genius of life, the next day people act like there's a bad smell when you approach. Lots of expensive, late-model cars are offered in the L.A. Times every day by people who have suddenly begun to smell bad. The stakes are just too high for human dignity.

Cynthia Heimel

Categorized in : People Smell Next Day

Dogs are us, only innocent.

Cynthia Heimel

innocent pet dog

There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth.

Cynthia Heimel

women inspirational life

We must eschew anything trivial. We must embrace all that is frivolous.... Trivial things take up all your time and dull your senses, whereas frivolity is meaningful, profound, worth living and dying for.... If we devote our lives to frivolity, the world will be a far, far better place. Humanity will be better able to fulfill its primary goal, that of having a good time.

Cynthia Heimel

goal meaningful profound

The moment you decide that you're a grownup now, and therefore must put away foolish things like staying out all night or cruising down strange highways is the moment you will lose that ineffable glow of youth. If you don't believe me, look around. Study those people who would rather go to shopping malls than dance halls, who think the height of depravity is bidding two no trump with only fifteen points. Every single one of these people has a stringy neck.

Cynthia Heimel

night believe thinking

Throughout their lives, women try to pummel their bodies into some phantom ideal shape that exists only with a lot of airbrushing. ... I don't blame men for this. Men seem to go for us no matter what size and shape we are. I blame capitalism. No, really. The consumer must constantly be in a state of anxious low self-esteem so that she will constantly buy lipsticks and girdles to make her feel cuter.

Cynthia Heimel

self-esteem trying men

With dogs, you don't need gurus. Dogs are forever in the moment. They are always a tidal wave of feelings, and every feeling is some variant of love.

Cynthia Heimel

dog forever feelings

We all have rosy memories of a simpler, happy time- a time of homemade apple pie and gingham curtains, a time when Mom understood everything and Dad could fix anything. "Let's get those traditional family values back!" we murmur to each other. Meanwhile, in a simultaneous universe, everyone I know, and every celebrity I don't know, is coming out of the closet to talk about how miserable they are because they grew up in dysfunctional families.

Cynthia Heimel

dad mom memories

Dogs act exactly the way we would act if we had no shame.

Cynthia Heimel

dog funny way

One does not have to sleep with, or even touch, someone who has paid for your meal. All those obligations are hereby rendered null and void, and any man who doesn't think so needs a quick jab in the kidney.

Cynthia Heimel

sleep men thinking

Never judge someone by who he's in love with; judge him by his friends. People fall in love with the most appalling people.

Cynthia Heimel

love people fall

Those rosy memories we all share are actually memories from our favorite TV shows. We've confused our own childhoods with episodes of "Ozzie and Harriet," "Father Knows Best," and "The Brady Bunch." In real life, Ozzie had a very visible mistress for years, Bud and Kitten on "Father Knows Best" grew up to become major druggies, and Mom on "The Brady Bunch" dated her fifteen-year-old fictional son.

Cynthia Heimel

mom memories father

Infidelity is such a pretty word, so light and delicate. Whereas the act itself is dark and thick with guilt, betrayal, confusion, pain, and (okay) sometimes enormous pleasure.

Cynthia Heimel

betrayal pain dark

Friends are the twenty-first-century version of extended families.

Cynthia Heimel

friends twenties firsts

We have to have faith in ourselves. I have never met a woman who, deep down in her core, really believes she has great legs. And if she suspects that she might have great legs, then she's convinced that she has a shrill voice and no neck.

Cynthia Heimel

feminist voice believe

The country is suffering from musical-chairs syndrome. We all dance around for a bit and then when we try to sit down again, somebody doesn't have a chair. We're running scared; we want ours.

Cynthia Heimel

musical running country

Your whole being is involved in taking care of someone else, worrying about what they think of you, how they treat you, how you can make them treat you better. Right now everyone in the world seems to think that they are codependent and that they come from dysfunctional families. They call it codependency. I call it the human condition.

Cynthia Heimel

worry world thinking

You love somebody, and then you don't love them anymore. But if you really love somebody, you always love them, don't you? Isn't there always some small part of you that reads their horoscope in the paper everyday?

Cynthia Heimel

everyday paper love

In New York we have streets exploding and innocent Buddhist girls being stabbed in the neck and cabdrivers refusing to help her. If we happen into a nightclub by mistake, when we leave the doorman will be lying in the street surrounded by police.

Cynthia Heimel

buddhist girl funny

we know that our world is corrupt and diseased but we're tired of being cynical and feeling helpless. What the hell, tilt at a windmill.

Cynthia Heimel

cynical tired our-world

Reading is an escape, an education, a delving into the brain of another human being on such an intimate level that every nuance of thought, every snapping of synapse, every slippery desire of the author is laid open before you like, well, a book.

Cynthia Heimel

reading brain book