Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way.
If you can’t annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.
When the bishop farted we were amused to hear about it. Should the ploughboy find treasure we must be told. But when the ploughboy farts... er... keep it to yourself.
For a man as keen as he on getting into bed with women, keeping hidden the full enormity of his fatness was a chronic problem. Its most acute form naturally came up when someone new had to be hustled or cajoled past the point of no return. That point tended to get later and later as his belly waxed.
The first, indeed the only, requirement of a diet is that it should lose you weight without reducing your alcoholic intake by the smallest degree.
Only a world without love strikes me as instantly and decisively more terrible than one without music.
The rewards for being sane may not be very many, but knowing what’s funny is one of them.
A bad review may spoil your breakfast, but you shouldn’t allow it to spoil your lunch.
Cats are only human, they have their faults.
He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic.
It is no wonder that people are so horrible when they start life as children.
Nice things are nicer than nasty ones.
The ideal of brotherhood of man, the building of the Just City, is one that cannot be discarded without lifelong feelings of disappointment and loss. But, if we are to live in the real world, discard it we must.
I sometimes feel that more lousy dishes are presented under the banner of pate than any other.
It’s never pleasant to have one’s unquestioning beliefs put in their historical context, as I know from experience, I can assure you.
He who truly believes he has a hangover has no hangover.
I once wrote deduceable instead of deducible in a book, though nobody then or since has taken me up on it. A small point as they go, perhaps, but Rule I of writing acceptably is to get everything right as far as you can, and in this case I had neglected to.
The Scandinavians are dear people but they’ve never been what you might call bywords for wit and sparkle, have they?
With some exceptions in science fiction and other genres I have small difficulty in avoiding anything that could be called American literature. I feel it is unnatural, not I think entirely because it uses a language that is not mine, however closely akin to my own.
Your attitude measures up to the two requirements of love. You want to go to bed with her and can’t, and you don’t know her very well. Ignorance of the other person topped up with deprivation, Jim. You fit the formula all right, and what’s more you want to go on fitting it.