“(Not every doctor can look into a mouse's ear without laughing)”

“So I told [the doctor] about my hay fever, which used to rage just in summertime but now simmers the year round, and he listened listlessly as though it were a cock and bull story; and we sat there for a few minutes and neither of us was interested in the other's nose, but after a while he poked a little swab up mine and made a smear on a glass slide and his assistant put it under the microscope and found two cells which delighted him and electrified the whole office, the cells being characteristic of a highly allergic system. The doctor's manner changed instantly and he was full of the enthusiasm of discovery and was as proud of the two little cells as though they were his own.”

“I am working on a new book about a boa constrictor and a litter of hyenas. The boa constrictor swallows the babies one by one, and the mother hyena dies laughing.”

“In every queen there's a touch of floozy.”

“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.”

“To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year. "The Distant Music of the Hounds," 1954”

“Advice to young writers wo want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don't write about Man, write about a man.”