The only “ism” Hollywood believes in is plagiarism.
At birth the Devil touched my tongue.
Anthologists are lazy fellows who like to spend a quiet evening at home raiding good books.
Nevil Shute’s On the Beach is no Christmas carol, but it seems to me a remarkably fine novel, one which I read, in the peculiarly repulsive phrase, with my eyes glued to the page.
They say of me, and so they should, It’s doubtful if I come to good.
Guns aren’t lawful; nooses give; gas smells awful. So you might as well live.
Bewildered is the fox who lives to find that grapes beyond reach can be really sour.
Age before beauty, and pearls before swine.
Every fashion, the fashion before: in a duller dress.
Accursed from their birth they be Who seek to find monogamy, Pursuing it from bed to bed – I think they would be better dead.
Don’t feel bad when I die; I’ve been dead for a long time.
This must be a gift book. That is to say a book, which you wouldn’t take on any other terms.
Telegram to a friend who had just become a mother after a prolonged pregnancy: Good work, Mary. We all knew you had it in you.
Hell’s afloat in lover’s tears.
Trapped like a trap in a trap.
Love is like quicksilver in the hand.
The Swiss are a neat and an industrious people, none of whom is under seventy-five years of age.
Prince or commoner, tenor or bass, Painter or plumber or never-do-well, Do me a favor and shut your face – Poets alone should kiss and tell.
I’m of the glamorous ladies At whose beckoning history shook. But you are a man, and see only my pan, So I stay at home with a book.
If I should labor through daylight and dark, Consecrate, valorous, serious, true, Then on the world I may blazon my mark; And what if I don’t, and what if I do?