"There's so much money to be made in Hollywood. I want to make enough to be free of the petty tyrannies of not having it. I want to go places, without having to travel third class. But I do want to go places. Life is only what you get out of it in the living, isn't it? I do want money, but I won't pay too much of myself to get it. I hate discipline. Time clocks are abhorrent to me."
Two years later, Mary Parker asks Flynn during an interview for Modern Screen: "Leaving aside the pearl diver, the slave trader, the gold prospector, the sailor and the hunter, what other values are there in the man you see there in the mirror? Let's make your mirror a sort of confessional and have the whole truth about Flynn."
"I think I am
a rather ludicrous poseur.
I know what a louse I am capable of being."
"I confess, I don't take life seriously. I take life, if you ask me, as a very enjoyable joke. The most worthwhile things in life to me are its laughs. But because I choose to treat it as a joke doesn't mean that I am not aware of the other side. I am also aware of the people who don't take it as a joke because their self-importance overstuffs them. You see, I simply don't believe that we are important, any of us. And an unimportant person can sit in the gallery and laugh his fool head off and have the hell of a time doing it. We only weep, don't we, over tremendously important things? So, if everything, ourselves included, is unimportant, it remains to laugh.
"But I must confess that I am an extremely happy person despite my awareness
of unhappiness. I am happy because I live in the realization of this moment.
I have no future, nor any plans for a future. I don't want to know where
I am going to be or what I am going to be doing a year from now. I loathe
routine. I detest clocks. I have absolutely no conception of time, and
don't want to have.
"I am
fortunate in realizing that I am young. A lot of people don't savor their
youth while they have it. They appreciate it only after it's over. I know
that I am young now. I know that this is the time. I know that right here
and now I am most keenly capable of zestful enjoyments, vivid excitements.
I'm having them. I get everything I can out of each present moment.
"It is said that we must all pay for our good times, that there is a law
of compensation which operates inevitably. If this is so, my times have
all been good and I must have a lot of retribution in store for me.
"Lili often tells me," laughed Errol, "that I will 'pay and pay.' Well, when that time comes, I can only hope that I will pay without squawking, decently grateful for the good times I have already had."
