"I have a gift for enraging people, but if I ever bore you, it'll be with a knife."
Louise is intent upon maintaining a carefree persona throughout her memoir. She desires to entrance her readers with endless entertainment, to portray her life in the most colorful terms. She engages in many witty remarks like this one, designed to illicit a quick response: high risk, high reward writing.
"I have been taking stock of my 50 years since I left Wichita in 1922 at the age of 15 to become a dancer with Ruth St. Denis and Ted shawn. How I have existed fills me with horror. For I have failed in everything -- spelling, arithmetic, riding, tennis, golf; dancing, singing, acting; wife, mistress, whore, friend. Even cooking.
And I do not excuse myself with the usual escape of 'not trying.' I tried with all my heart."
Louise looks back upon her life with a terrible sinking feeling. She has not become the huge successful achiever which she set out to become when she left home, but she has tried. She took an active role in life but never stuck around long enough in any one sphere to become truly successful.
"And so I have remained, in relentless pursuit of truth and excellence, an unforgiving executioner of the bogus, an abomination to all but those few people who have overcome their aversion to truth in order to free whatever is good in them."
Louise prides herself upon recognizing phonies. She identifies a certain false ambition in all the people around her, it seems, while she has managed to remain steadfast in her duty to call these people out on it. In her own estimation, she is correct and perfectly liberated.
"In writing the history of a life I believe absolutely that the reader cannot understand the character and deeds of the subject unless he is given a basic understanding of that person's sexual loves and hates and conflicts. It is the only way the reader can make sense out of innumerable apparently senseless actions."
In a moment of sincere excellence, Louise recognizes that she must give the reader an interpretation of many of her more bizzare actions. She was in love. Or she was crazy to be in love. Basically, she chalks up her minor flirtations with fanaticism to the influence of her lovers.
