“That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can’t say ‘No’ in any of them.”

The only dependable law of life – everything is always worse than you thought it was going to be.

I’m not a writer with a drinking problem, I’m a drinker with a writing problem.

There’s a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.

The cleverest woman on earth is the biggest fool on earth with a man.

Years are only garments, and you either wear them with style all your life, or else you go dowdy to the grave.

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

I require only three things of a man. He must be handsome, ruthless and stupid.

I don’t mind anything that’s written about me, as long as it’s not true.

If I didn’t care for fun and such, I’d probably amount to much. But I shall stay the way I am, Because I do not give a damn.

Now I know the things I know, and I do the things I do; and if you do not like me so, to hell, my love, with you!

Honesty means nothing until you are tested under circumstances where you are sure you could get away with dishonesty.

Women and elephants never forget.

People ought to be one of two things, young or dead.

If you looked for things to make you feel hurt and wretched and unnecessary, you were certain to find them.

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

Quick!! Act as if nothing has happened!

When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.

No fear or shame in the dignity of your experience, language, and knowledge.

Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they’re not attracting attention with it.

No; I did not hate him. The word is too weak. There is no word in the language strong enough to describe my feelings. I can say only that I knew the gnawing of a desire for vengeance on him that was a pain in itself and that exceeded all the bounds of language.

The word is too weak. There is no word in the language strong enough to describe my feelings.

An alcoholic father, poverty, my own juvenile diabetes, the limited English my parents spoke – although my mother has become completely bilingual since. All these things intrude on what most people think of as happiness.

Boy, those French: they have a different word for everything!

There is only one caste the caste of humanity. There is only one religion the religion of love. There is only one language the language of the heart.