“Understanding humor is like dissecting a live frog. It can be done, but the frog tends to die in the process.”

A despot doesn’t fear eloquent writers preaching freedom- he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold.

The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind.

Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people– people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.

Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.

A writer’s style reveals something of his spirit, his habits, his capacites, his bias…it is the Self escaping into the open.

It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck.

A schoolchild should be taught grammar-for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy.

We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.

Make the work interesting and the discipline will take care of itself.

Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

Why did you do all this for me?’ he asked. ‘I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.’ ‘You have been my friend,’ replied Charlotte. ‘That in itself is a tremendous thing.

You can dissect a joke just as you can a frog. But it tends to die on you.

I am always humbled by the infite ingenuity of the Lord, who can make a red barn cast a blue shadow.

A right is a responsibility in reverse.

Television will enormously enlarge the eye’s range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs, the mags, and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote.

To achieve style, begin by affecting none.