“The Swiss are a neat and an industrious people, none of whom is under seventy-five years of age.”

“I can’t write five words but that I change seven.”

“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.”

“Like many a better one before me, I have gone down under the force of numbers, under the books and books and books that keep coming out and coming out and coming out, shoals of them, spates of them, flash floods of them, too blame many books, and no sign of an end.”

“God, the bitter misery that reading works into this world! Everybody knows that - everbody who IS everybody. All the best minds have been off reading for years. Look at the swing La Rouchefoucauld took at it. He said that if nobody had ever learned to read, very few people would be in love. Good for you, La Rouchefoucauld; nice going, boy. I wish I’d never learned to read.”

“For years I have been crouching in corners hissing small and ladylike anathema of Theodore Dreiser.”

“Every year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.”