“The smaller the dinner table, the better the side conversation: you can gossip about the guests without fearing whether you will be overheard. It just isn't good table manners to exclude someone from their own ridicule. That's why the juiciest side conversations occur at a table for one.”

“Neighbors are the most indecent sort of folk around. Nothing but voyeurs and gossipers. As a community we would be much better off without them.”

“I ran into an old friend on the street and we started up a conversation. Four hours and six bottles of wine later, we decided the weather was just too unpredictable, and we parted ways.”

“I threw an etiquette party and served nothing but beans and sparkling water. The topic of conversation was ‘excuse me’.”

“this is how you smile to someone you don't like too much; this is how you smile to someone you don't like at all; this is how you smile to someone you like completely; this is how you set a table for tea; this is how you set a table for dinner; this is how you set a table for dinner with an important guest; this is how you set a table for lunch; this is how you set a table for breakfast; this is how to behave in the presence of men who don't know you very well, and this way they won't recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming;”

“So many things happen that we can't control, its best not to worry about what we can. Believing you can change the world has a terrible effect on one's ego.”

“One never owns a book. It sits on your shelf in a fine edition like a piece of furniture, and you are its admiring ward until it flies off from you in a time of financial hardship. If it is a tattered paperback, she is your casual mistress you use a few times. If you have read it a hundred times then it is your wife, and a source of infinite mystery.”