"And there was that wholesale libel on a Yale prom. If all the girls attending it were laid end to end, Mrs Parker said, she wouldn't be at all surprised."

"That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say No in any of them."

"If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they're happy."

"What fresh hell can this be?"

"You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think."

"It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard."

"Too fucking busy, and vice versa."

"There is no such hour on the present clock as 6:30, New York time. Yet, as only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you'll live through the night."

"[On being told of Calvin Coolidge's death] How do they know? (Coolidge was known as a man who said very few words.)"

"All those writers who write about their own childhood! Gentle God, if I wrote about mine you wouldn't sit in the same room with me."

"It's not the tragedies that kill us; it's the messes."

"There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words."

"It takes me six months to do a story. I think it out and then write it sentence by sentence—no first draft. I can't write five words but that I change seven."

"One more drink and I'd have been under the host."

"I'm never going to accomplish anything; that's perfectly clear to me. I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more."

"I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things."

"And I'll stay away from Verlaine too; he was always chasing Rimbauds."

"The ones I like ... are "cheque" and "enclosed.""

"Drink and dance and laugh and lie, Love, the reeling midnight through, For tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do.)"

"The House Beautiful is, for me, the play lousy."

"A lady ... with all the poise of the Sphinx though but little of her mystery."

"That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment."

"And it is that word 'hummy,' my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up."

"Well, Aimee Semple McPherson has written a book. And were you to call it a little peach, you would not be so much as scratching its surface. It is the story of her life, and it is called In the Service of the King, which title is perhaps a bit dangerously suggestive of a romantic novel. It may be that this autobiography is set down in sincerity, frankness and simple effort. It may be, too, that the Statue of Liberty is situated in Lake Ontario."

"Salary is no object: I want only enough to keep body and soul apart."

"And she had It. It, hell; she had Those."

"Excuse my dust."

"I am more the inspirational type of speller. I work on hunches rather than mere facts, and the result is sometimes open to criticism by purists."

"Anyone will be glad to admit that he knows nothing about beagling, or the Chinese stock market, or ballistics, but there is not a man or woman alive who does not claim to know how to cure hiccoughs."

"There is no such place as Budapest. Perhaps you are thinking of Bucharest, and there is no such place as Bucharest, either."

"The only cure for a real hangover is death."

"The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. That remark in itself wouldn’t make any sense if quoted as it stands."

"I don’t want to be an alarmist, but I think that the Younger Generation is up to something.... I base my apprehension on nothing more definite than the fact that they are always coming in and going out of the house, without any apparent reason."

"A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down."

"Nine-tenths of the value of a sense of humor in writing is not in the things it makes one write but in the things it keeps one from writing. It is especially valuable in this respect in serious writing, and no one without a sense of humor should ever write seriously. For without knowing what is funny, one is constantly in danger of being funny without knowing it."

"I can’t quite define my aversion to asking questions of strangers. From snatches of family battles which I have heard drifting up from railway stations and street corners, I gather that there are a great many men who share my dislike for it, as well as an equal number of women who … believe it to be the solution to most of this world’s problems."

"In America there are two classes of travel — first class, and with children."

"At fifteen one is first beginning to realize that everything isn’t money and power in this world, and is casting about for joys that do not turn to dross in one’s hands."

"A baby is shown sitting on the floor. He appears to be about a year and a half old. Incidentally, he is a very plain baby. Strewn about him on the floor are the toys that he has been playing with. There are a ball, a rattle, a ring, a doll, a bell and a pair of roller-skates. Evidently, the candidate is supposed to be aghast at the roller-skates in the possession of such a small child. The man who drew that picture had evidently never furnished playthings for a small child. I can imagine nothing that would delight a child of a year and a half more than a pair of roller-skates to chew and spin and hit himself in the face with. They could also be dropped on Daddy when Daddy was lying on the floor in an attempt to be sociable. Of all the toys arranged before the child, the roller-skates are the most logical. … That is my great trouble in taking tests and examinations of any kind. I always want to argue with the examiner, because the examiner is always so obviously wrong."

"The English language may hold a more disagreeable combination of words than "The doctor will see you now." I am willing to concede something to the phrase "Have you anything to say before the current is turned on?" That may be worse for the moment, but it doesn't last so long. For continued, unmitigating depression, I know nothing to equal "The doctor will see you now." But I'm not narrow-minded about it. I'm willing to consider other possibilities."

"The way to go to the circus, however, is with someone who has seen perhaps one theatrical performance before in his life and that in the High School hall. … The scales of sophistication are struck from your eyes and you see in the circus a gathering of men and women who are able to do things as a matter of course which you couldn’t do if your life depended on it."

"There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes, and those who do not. Both classes are extremely unpleasant to meet socially, leaving practically no one in the world whom one cares very much to know."

"Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing."

"Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the author's soul. If that upheaval is not present then it must come from the works of any other author which happens to be handy and easily adapted."

"Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment."

"I do most of my work sitting down; that's where I shine."

"Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with, that it's compounding a felony."

"So who's in a hurry?"