“If all the girls attending [the Yale prom] were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”

Quick!! Act as if nothing has happened!

Constant use had not worn ragged the fabric of their friendship.

Where unwilling dies the rose; buds the new another year.

If you want to know what God thinks about money, just look at the people He gives it to.

Those who have mastered etiquette, who are entirely, impeccably right, would seem to arrive at a point of exquisite dullness.

Should they whisper false of you, Never trouble to deny; Should the words they say be true, Weep and storm and say they lie.

The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires.

It turns out that, at social gatherings, as a source of entertainment, conviviality, and good fun, I rank somewhere between a sprig of parsley and a single ice-skate.

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.

I like best to have one book in my hand, and a stack of others on the floor beside me, so as to know the supply of poppy and mandragora will not run out before the small hours.

The only “ism” Hollywood believes in is plagiarism.

I can’t write five words but that I change seven.

A little bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika.

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

I like to have a martini/Two at the very most/After three I’m under the table/After four I’m under my host.

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

We would consider it our moral duty to lend all support to the ending of colonialism and imperialism so that people everywhere are free to mould their own destiny.

The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.

The truth is that since childhood I had cultivated an existential independence. It came from perceiving the adults around me as unreliable, and without it I felt I wouldn’t have survived. I cared deeply for everyone in my family, but in the end I depended on myself.

As soon as government management begins it upsets the natural equilibrium of industrial relations, and each interference only requires further bureaucratic control until the end is the tyranny of the totalitarian state.

As adults we try to relax from the never-ending quest for reason and order by drinking a little whiskey or smoking whatever works for us, but the wisdom isn’t in the whiskey or the smoke. The wisdom is in the moments when the madness slips away and we remember the basics.

As adults we try to relax from the never-ending quest for reason and order by drinking a little whiskey or smoking whatever works for us, but the wisdom isn’t in the whiskey or the smoke. The wisdom is in the moments when the madness slips away and we remember the basics.

We all have experiences in our lives that change us, and we all learn from people, like my dad, but at the end of the day, it’s only us. And we’re only responsible to make ourselves happy.

Death means my present physical costume ends.