“Simple pleasures are best.”

“To be most effective, flattery is always best applied with a trowel.”

“The very best people are like that. They don't entangle you like flypaper.”

“As Daffy once said, the best place to hide a glum countenance is onstage at the opera.”

“…because I was only eleven years old, I was wrapped in the best cloak of invisibility in the world.”

“Mediocrity, I discovered, was the great camouflage; the great protective coloring. Those boys who did not fail, yet did not excel, were left alone, free of the demands of the master who might wish to groom them for glory and of the school bully who might make them his scapegoat. That simple fact was the first great discovery of my life.”

“I had found by experience that putting things down on paper helped to clear the mind in precisely the same way, as Mrs. Mullet had taught me, that an eggshell clarifies the consommé or the coffee, which, of course, is a simple matter of chemistry. The albumin contained in the eggshell has the property of collecting and binding the rubbish that floats in the dark liquid, which can then be removed and discarded in a single reeking clot: a perfect description of the writing process.”