All Americans come from Ohio originally, if only briefly.

I cannot exist without the oxygen of laughter.

Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out.

A writer's business is minding other people's business ... all the vices of the village gossip are the virtues of the writer.

The human comedy is always tragic, but since its ingredients are always the same - dupe, fox, straight, like burlesque skits - the repetition through the ages is comedy.

Rage swept over her at being young, young and little, as if some evil fairy had put that spell on her. Why must you be locked up in this dreadful cage of childhood for twenty or a hundred years? Nothing in life was possible unless you were old and rich, until then you were only small and futile before your tormentors, desperately waiting for the release that only years could bring.

I realize more and more how instinctively pessimistic I am of all human kindness -- since I am always so bowled over by it -- and am never surprised by injustice, malice or personal attack.