Edie Sedgwick

"She made you feel privileged to be there."

"I love orchids. It was a personal thing from me to her. I said, "You really need to fix yourself up, my dear. Put them on you somewhere." She cried out, "I hate them! I don't want to be beautiful!" She wrecked the flowers. Edie was hating me. We were both hating each other because of the roles we were playing . . . I loved Edie, but I couldn't stand being in the movie with her the way she looked. She was horrible in the movie, and mean. The things I was saying were so horrible."

"The Warhol people felt Edie was giving them trouble - they were furious with her because she wasn't cooperating. So they went to a Forty-second Street bar and found Ingrid von Schefflin. They had noticed: "Doesn't this girl look like an ugly Edie? Let's really teach Edie a lesson. Let's make a movie with her and tell Edie she's the big new star." They cut her hair like Edie's. They made her up like Edie. Her name became Ingrid Superstar . . . just an invention to make Edie feel horrible."

"There was some sort of problem about continuing with Edie at Vogue. Perhaps the magazine's policy became involved. The whole thing kind of collapsed. It was never pursued again. We lost a moment when we could have captured it . . . which was sad. She disappeared from our lives. Edie's timing was a fraction off. She almost did become a part of the family at Vogue. If that had happened, she would have had tremendous protection. But she was identified in the gossip columns with the drug scene, and back then there was a certain apprehension about being involved in that scene people were really terrified by it."

"It was a hot, bright day, and she wore sunglasses, a tight blouse, and short pants. I was spellbound. Edie livened up the meal considerably by skipping out on dessert to slip out through the French doors to the backyard, where she stripped down to her panties to sunbathe half naked — I remember nothing but a sense of spectacular whiteness against the green lawn — while the grownups sipped coffee from demitasse cups, unaware."

"One night Edie and I were sitting there. She was drinking coffee to speed herself up some more - God! - when out of the blue she said, "Hey, Jonathan! I think you should make love with me!" I said, "No, Edie, no, I'm not into that!" "I really think you should do it, Jonathan. I'd like to." She reminded me of the time when she went to London with Suky and my mother, and I came over from Germany, from the Army; Edie wanted to make love with me, and I didn't do it then either. She said, "Everybody always wanted me. My father wanted me. He tried to make love to me. All the men on the ranch wanted me. Even you wanted me, Jonathan." I said, "Yeah I did. For sure." So in the coffee shop she kept saying, "I think it's something you should do. Jonathan, I . . . I really think you ought to make love with me now." She was very high on speed her head was shaking up and down. "Jonathan, I think we ought to do it now." I felt maybe we should find out what our love was for each other. She was beautiful; I liked her. I knew she'd teach me something . . . but I didn't do it."

"She was an alien. She'd pick up what you were about to say before you'd say it."

"When she was walking along the street, she dropped her purse and a whole bunch of reds and things fell out. A cop car pulled up, 'What ya doing?' And then the cops get the idea that she was carrying drugs on her. So they got out and threw her up against the car, her hands up over the hood, at which point her purse spilled open again and they're whites, the reds falling everywhere! The cop who had pushed her against the car turned around and began picking up the stuff, so she wheeled around and gave him a kick in the ass man, with all the energy and hate she could. The court put Edie on probation for 5 years. After the bust she became a patient at the Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara."

"I immediately said on the phone: "Don't let them get to her! She's not dead yet, man!" I felt she'd simply astro-projected, which means that you've separated your consciousness from your body and you're still connected by some sort of energy: some call it a silver thread, or a silver cord. Jimi Hendrix went out on it and never came back. Edie did, too. I tried to see if we could stop it, but they'd already taken the blood out of her, and once that's done, you're dead."

"The funeral was a drag, man. Everybody was feeling sorry for themselves. Michael was feeling sorry for himself. Mummy was feeling sorry for herself. Krista and I were the only people there who felt sorry for everybody else. I cried. I hurt a lot about Edie, and I hurt a lot about Minty, and I hurt a lot about Bobby, and I hurt a lot about Fuzzy. Sometimes I wonder how many people a family can destroy with their stupidity."

"I think as she got older, the recklessness got stronger, and it really would have been far more brave for her to try to do otherwise than what she was doing. She was the opposite of brave. She let the tide carry her along. And the tide was a destructive one, and she became a smaller and smaller speck as she simply let herself be swept along in its flow."

"Edie seemed superficially sane. Rather than anxious or disturbed, she seemed angry and resigned. But then at lunch I saw her heap her plate and eat in that bizarre way that anorectics do, picking and wolfing . . . and then she would get up and disappear. When I heard what the choices were - that unless Edie went to the mental hospital at Silver Hill where Minty had been, my father would leave the family. I said to my mother, "You're in a situation where you have to choose between your husband and your children." She said, "Oh no, there's no question of leaving my husband. I couldn't.""

"I was a great, great friend of Edie Sedgwick … Edie and I were in several of the early Andy Warhol films … Edie was beautiful beyond words. She was absolutely breath-taking and a very sweet person. Edie was a precious person. She was heavily into drugs which caused her death. … Edie was very glamorous. And truly beautiful, breathtaking, and I think it was a great loss she died so young."

"Edie didn't belong with the bikers. Like, she was a rich hippie. the rich hippies, their mommy buys them a chopper - a four-thousand-dollar chopper - and they drive it until the weather gets cold and they get themselves a nice, warm car. Your true biker takes his bike out whatever the weather because he loves it. When a rich hippie gets in an accident, he sells his bike, what's left of it. "Oh, I got hurt, I don't want this." The good biker fixes his. I've been lucky. I've been down quite a few times . . . tasted the pavement quite a bit. You live by a bike; you die by a bike, That's what I believe."

"Once, when she saw the script of Shower - probably the best one-actor I've ever written, in which Edie and Roger Trudeau spend the whole thing in the shower- she started screaming, "I will not be a spokesman for Tavel's perversities!" That was the first time I'd ever heard my work described as perverse. I was to hear it in years to come from some of our best-known critics . . . but that was the first time anyone cared enough to say such a thing. "I will not be in it!" Edie cried, and marched out. "I won't do this!" The end really came when Edie tore up the script of a movie called Space, saying she wasn't going to memorize anything. She started to read a few of her lines: "What is all this about? How stupid!" and tore it up, right in front of everybody. That's when I walked out. That may have been the last time I saw her."

"The maid said, "Can I take your coat?" She said, "No, I don't think so. I'm a little cold." Later Edie told me the real reason she didn't want to take her coat off was that she wasn't wearing any clothes under it."

"It must have had an effect on Andy - Edie leaving him for Dylan, or whoever. He was probably in love with Edie, with all of us - a sexless kind of love, but he would take up your whole life so that you had no time for any other man. When Edie left with Grossman and Dylan, that was betrayal, and he was furious . . . a lover betrayed by his mistress."

"Edie loved parties. Edie adored parties. It was a very comfortable party. People dancing. The moon rose out of the ocean, spiraling up in the dark. It was the final touch — a nice moon rippling on the ocean and turning everything silver. Edie was very sensitive to enchantments. She broke away from the form completely and was doing these totally free dance movements. We looked out from under the marquee, and there she was on this deserted lawn. And she was cartwheeling across it, cartwheeling. I remember the music dying down as the focus of attention shifted to her out there. Edie had disappeared. It was a bit spooky. Somebody said, "We saw her go swimming." She was nowhere in sight on this beach. "Is that her? Way, way out?" Edie was way out...a little dark head...such a distance. She seemed to be going under and then surfacing again. I could see the shine of her legs as she dove. It was like her dancing the night before. She was playing … totally natural and involved in the element of water; she was like a porpoise. She seemed only to exist freely in atmospheres that were removed or enchanted … most people are happy swimming by the shore, but she was happy out there."

"For some reason Edie was very strongly on me that night so I decided to have Myers's daiquiris because it was Myers's daiquiris that Edie and I had in Casablanca, where the whole Cambridge scene between us took place. They had never heard of a daiquiri in South India so we had to make them ourselves. They got the lemon out from behind the bar and we bought a bottle of dark rum. When they finally brought out a jug . . . I think it was a metal can . . . we took the lemons and we squeezed them, and then they brought out the sugar little by little to add to the mixture. India is a very poor country and there's never enough sugar. We set up a glass for Edie, which is an Indian thing . . . a way of honoring some spirit that was killed. So there was a glass for Edie sitting on the other side of the table from my friend Mike and I. I remembered that Edie smoked, so I put a cigarette in the ashtray there. The cigarette wasn't lit and it just sat there. And the drink sat there. And I talked about Edie."

"One person in the sixties fascinated me more than anybody I had ever known. And the fascination I experienced was probably very close to a certain kind of love. now. But her name is still going. It seems incredible, doesn't it?"

"She had a poignantly vacant, vulnerable quality that made her a reflection of everybody's private fantasies."

"She was also a compulsive liar; she just couldn't tell the truth about anything. And what an actress. She could really turn on the tears. She could somehow always make you believe her — that's how she got what she wanted."

"Sort of Egyptian, with her head tilting in just the right, beautiful way. People called it 'The Sedgwick', and Edie was the only one who did it — everybody else was doing The Jerk."

"She'd be off to a jet-set party here and an underground party there, and also rapping to the guy from the deli. And everybody on each level believed that her life on that level was her real trip."

"Edie saw herself as tough like a little tomboy."

"It was at Lester Persky's place that Edie met Andy Warhol. It was early 1965. She was doing her dance there - a sort of balletlike rock 'n' roll. We'd had an idea of opening up an underwater discotheque where Edie'd dance her ballet to Bach played at rock 'n' roll tempo. So Andy invited us down to the Factory the next day and he said, "Why don't we do some things together?" Andy spotted her energy. Everybody else was tired and going through the trip."

"Edie could keep everybody busy getting her things . . . eight guys calling her up from eight different social strata. She'd be off to a jet set party here and an underground party there, and also rapping to the guy from the deli. And everybody on each level believed that her life on that level was her real trip. She kept everybody going!"

"Edie was very smart, you know, too smart. Because she came from such an insular place, she had an interesting commentary on what went by, 'cause she saw it like it was rather than in some social context like we all would."

"She couldn't really cope with the day-to-day reality, and she always needed to have friends who understood that. Edie provided the glamour, you see, and the glitter . . . when she walked into some place, the whole room turned. And if they didn't, she'd do something in the next twenty second that would make them. She'd giggle or she'd dance and spin around."

"Edie was back in Cottage Hospital the summer of 1970 when I made my first attempt to recontact her and finish Ciao! Manhattan. Actually, at this point she seemed like she had really gotten a new grip on her life. That was one of her tricks: "I've really been to the depths, but now I want to start a new life. A normal, simple life." That was the image that Edie was projecting at that time, and I got very caught up in it. "Okay, Edie, we're going to finish Ciao! Manhattan; we're all going to do it together; it's our project; we believe in it.""

"Brigid told Andy that Edie had suffocated, and Andy asked when?, not sounding particularly surprised or shaken. But then, that's Andy. Brigid pointed out to him that Edie hadn't died of drugs, she had suffocated in her sleep. And Andy asked how she could do a thing like that. Brigid didn't know. Then Andy asked whether he would inherit the money? (I took the he as a reference to Edie's young husband at the time of Edie's death.) Brigid said that Edie didn't have any money. Then, after a pause, Andy continued with something like, Well, what have you been doing? Then Brigid started talking about going to the dentist."