1
Los Angeles is a town where status is all and status is only given to success. Dukes and millionaires and playboys by the dozen may arrive and be glad-handed for a time, but they are unwise if they choose to live there because the town is, perhaps even creditably, committed to recognising only professional success, and nothing else, to be of lasting value. The burdensome obligation imposed on all its inhabitants is therefore to present themselves as successes, because otherwise they forfeit their right to respect in that environment .. There is no place in that town for the "interesting failure" or for anyone who is not determined on a life that will be shaped in a upward-heading curve. .Julian Fellowes
2
Especially as I was an old friend, or at least I was a person she had known for a long time, which after a certain point is almost the same thing...Julian Fellowes
3
Very few Englishmen ever ask a woman anything about themselves. They choose instead to lecture their dinner neighbors on a new and better route to the M5, or to praise their own professional achievements. So is a man does express any curiosity about a woman sitting next to him, about her feelings, about the life she is leading, she will generally tell him anything he cares to know.Julian Fellowes
4
Education. Experience. Or are they the same thing?Julian Fellowes
5
Nor should they be, but everyone needs to feel they're part of something worthwhile. That, in the last analysis, their life has some meaning in a larger context. The questions is what am I part of? What have I done?Julian Fellowes