Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Anthologists are lazy fellows who like to spend a quiet evening at home raiding good books.
[On Dashiell Hammett:] ... he is so hard-boiled you could roll him on the White House lawn.
This must be a gift book. That is to say a book, which you wouldn't take on any other terms.
Of course I talk to myself. I like a good speaker, and I appreciate an intelligent audience.
You do what you can, and you do it because you should. But all you can do is all you can do.
All I have to be thankful for in this world is that I was sitting down when my garter busted.
[On Katharine Hepburn's stage performance:] She ran the whole gamut of emotions, from A to B.
I like to think of my shining tombstone. It gives me, as you might say, something to live for.
When your bank account is so overdrawn that it is positively photographic, steps must be taken.
Go to the Martin Beck Theatre and watch Katherine Hepburn run the gamut of emotions from A to B.
The Swiss are a neat and an industrious people, none of whom is under seventy-five years of age.
If all the girls attending [the Yale prom] were laid end to end, I wouldn't be at all surprised.
His books are exciting and powerful and — if I may filch the word from the booksy ones — pulsing.
The only dependable law of life - everything is always worse than you thought it was going to be.
The only useful thing I ever learned in school was that if you spit on your eraser it erased ink.
Yet, as only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you'll live through the night.
Oh, both my shoes are shiny new, And pristine is my hat My dress is 1922… My life is all like that.
It's easier to write about those you hate — just as it's easier to criticize a bad play or a bad book.
Genius can write on the back of old envelopes but mere talent requires the finest stationery available.
[On hearing that Clare Boothe Luce was invariably kind to her inferiors:] And where does she find them?
Sometimes I think I'll give up trying, and just go completely Russian and sit on a stove and moan all day.
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.
If you looked for things to make you feel hurt and wretched and unnecessary, you were certain to find them.
And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word.
There was nothing separate about her days. Like drops on the window-pane, they ran together and trickled away.
Years are only garments, and you either wear them with style all your life, or else you go dowdy to the grave.
[On an actor who'd broken her leg in London:] Oh, how terrible. She must have done it sliding down a barrister.
The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires.
[To the British actor who annoyed her by repeated references to his busy 'shedule':] I think you're full of skit.
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!
[After she and Clare Boothe Luce met in a doorway and the latter said, 'Age before beauty':] Pearls before swine.
Excuse me, everybody, I have to go to the bathroom. I really have to telephone, but I'm too embarrassed to say so.
I might repeat to myself . . . a list of quotations from minds profound - if I can remember any of the damn things.
[On being told party guests were ducking for apples:] There, but for a typographical error, is the story of my life.
Honesty means nothing until you are tested under circumstances where you are sure you could get away with dishonesty.
Travel, trouble, music, art, a kiss, a frock, a rhyme -- I never said they feed my heart, but still they pass my time.
The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature.
Some men break your heart in two, Some men fawn and flatter, Some men never look at you; And that cleans up the matter.
If I had a shiny gun I could have a world of fun Speeding bullets through the brains Of the folks that cause me pains :)
Now that you've got me right down to it, the only thing I didn't like about The Barrets of Wimplole Street was the play.
If all the young ladies who attended the Yale promenade dance were laid end to end, no one would be the least surprised.
There must be a magnificent disregard of your reader, for if he cannot follow you, there is nothing you can do about it.
Then if my friendships break and bend, There's little need to cry The while I know that every foe Is faithful till I die.
Oh, seek, my love, your newer way; I'll not be left in sorrow. So long as I have yesterday, Go take your damned tomorrow!
Her mind lives tidily, apart from cold and noise and pain. And bolts the door against her heart, out wailing in the rain.
If, with the literate, I am Impelled to try an epigram, I never seek to take the credit; We all assume that Oscar said it.
Drink and dance and laugh and lie, Love, the reeling midnight through, For tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do.)
Accursed from their birth they be Who seek to find monogamy, Pursuing it from bed to bed— I think they would be better dead.
Why is it no one sent me yet one perfect limousine, do you suppose? Ah no, it's always just my luck to get one perfect rose.
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.