“Banquet: a plate of cold, hairy chicken and artificially coloured green peas completely surrounded by dreary speeches and appeals for donations.”

Football season: The only time of the year when a man can walk down the street with a blond on one arm and a blanket on the other without encountering raised eyebrows.

There is a mass of people, we might as well admit, who if they weren’t watching television, would be doing absolutely nothing else.

Gross ignorance is 144 times worse than ordinary ignorance.

TV’s sameness has destroyed many things, such as the American urge toward independent thought.

Do I believe in ghosts? Of course I do. So do you. Deep in the souls of the most sophisticated of us is lurking a fear of the supernatural which all the discoveries of scientists cannot eradicate.

For me, a hearty “belly laugh” is one of the beautiful sounds in the world.

I think the right to read, is one of our inherent rights, and I think that people in America today are intelligent enough to decide for themselves what they want to read. Without being told, by self-appointed people, you must not read this, or you cannot read this.

The person who can bring the spirit of laughter into a room is indeed blessed.

Politicians are like ships: noisiest when lost in a fog.

Good manners: The noise you don’t make when you’re eating soup.

Oratory is the art of making a loud noise sound like a deep thought.

One of the greatest threats facing book publishing, and the entire country for that matter, is censorship.

The Atomic Age is here to stay – but are we?

The fundamental difference between the mystery story and the ghost story is the fact that a mystery demands a solution for its effectiveness; a ghost story is necessarily unsolvable; the reader must be willing to accept the fact that nothing is proved.

There once was a student named Bessor Whose knowledge grew lessor and lessor. It at last grew so small He knew nothing at all, And today he’s a college professor!

One of the troubles of the day, observes Mr. C.N. Peac, is that once we came upon the little red schoolhouse, whereas now we come upon the little-read school boy.

The motto of West African cooking is that if the food doesn’t set fire to the tablecloth the cook is being stingy with the pepper.

I don’t really cook meat. I eat a bit of seafood but I’m not really into meat and the idea of cooking it is pretty intense.

The small things of life were often so much bigger than the great things . . . the trivial pleasure like cooking, one’s home, little poems especially sad ones, solitary walks, funny things seen and overheard.

I love home cooking, and I’m not a great one for fast food.

I asked, “What are words?” The tenzo said, “One, two, three, four, five.” I asked again, “What is practice?” “Nothing in the entire universe is hidden.”

I do not stick to rules when cooking. I rely on my imagination.

Mind you, why they’d be cooking chips at this hour was anyone’s guess.

I am a guilty party here – to take, or get, undue credit for domestic virtue, when in truth cooking is the most painless and, in its ways, ostentatious of the domestic chores.