“[T]wo Americans re-encountering each other after a certain time in a foreign land are supposed to clamber up their nearest lampposts and wait tremblingly for it all to blow over.”

“[T]he question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again night after night, but God knows the answer to that is, don’t we all anyway; might as well get paid for it.”

“It's difficult to explain, but I just somehow feel that I never really *have* lived; that I never really will live--exist or whatever--in the sense that other people do. It drives me crazy. I was terribly aware of it all those nights waiting for you in the Ritz bar looking around at what seemed to be real grown-up lives. I just find everybody else's life surrounded by plate glass. I mean I'd like to break through it just once and actually touch one.”

“[W]hat is always overlooked is that although the poor want to be rich, it does not follow that they either like the rich or that they in any way want to emulate their characters which, in fact, they despise. Both the poor and the rich have always found precisely the same grounds on which to complain about each other. Each feels the other has no manners, is disloyal, corrupt, insensitive - and has never put in an honest day's work in its life.”

“I imagined there must be hundreds and thousands and millions of people quiet in the dark out there, waiting with baited breath for me, up on that stage and bathed in colored lights, to say something. I opened my mouth and—hooray—they were going to listen.”

“I’ve never wanted to meet anyone I’ve been introduced to. I want to meet all the other people.”

“You're not playing the game," he said grimly. "English gossip isn't supposed to get back to the person it's about.”