“I can’t bare you when you’re not amusing.”

Not everyone grows to be old, but everyone has been younger than he is now.

All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I’d sooner go to my dentist any day.

If you asked me now who I am, the only answer I could give with any certainty would be my name. For the rest: my loves, my hates, down even to my deepest desires, I can no longer say whether these emotions are my own, or stolen from those I once so desperately wished to be.

O God, make me good, but not yet.

I did not know it was possible to be so miserable and live but I am told that this is a common experience.

The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant they are.

A typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it.

We possess nothing certainly except the past.

I put the words down and push them a bit.

It is easy, retrospectively, to endow one’s youth with a false precocity or a false innocence; to tamper with the dates marking one’s stature on the edge of the door.

If politicians and scientists were lazier, how much happier we should all be.

Aesthetic value is often the by-product of the artist striving to do something else.

One forgets words as one forgets names. One’s vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.

Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.

If a thing’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing well.

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.

Every producer in Hollywood had set me down as a type. I was both amused and disappointed.

…Nefret said with a gusty sigh, ‘Well, that’s done it. We may as well join in, Ramses, family arguments are the favorite form of amusement here and this looks like being a loud one.

Encourage innocent amusement.

Nice costume,” he said. “ditto. I can tell you put a lot of thought into yours.” amusement curled his mouth. “if you don’t like it, i can take it off.

Nice costume,” he said. “ditto. I can tell you put alot of though into yours.” amusement curled his mouth. “if you don’t like it, i can take it off.” i tapped my chin thoughtfully. “that just might be the best proposal i’ve had all night.” “my offers are always the best, angel.

Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people, because they have a power of looking at such persons as objects of amusement of another race altogether.

Throw a stick, and the servile dog wheezes and pants and shambles to bring it to you. Do the same before a cat, and he will eye you with coolly polite and somewhat bored amusement.

In one book, CACHALOT, just for my own amusement, every character is based directly on someone I have known.