The only dependable law of life - everything is always worse than you thought it was going to be.

[On Kay Strozzi in The Silent Witness:] Miss Strozzi ... had the temerity to wear as truly horrible a gown as ever I have seen on the American stage. ... Had she not luckily been strangled by a member of the cast while disporting this garment, I should have fought my way to the stage and done her in, myself.

Gertrude Stein did us the most harm when she said, 'You're all a lost generation.' That got around to certain people and we all said, 'Whee! We're lost.

And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word.

They tire of quiet, that have known the storm

I'm of the glamorous ladies At whose beckoning history shook. But you are a man, and see only my pan, So I stay at home with a book.

Salary is no object: I want only enough to keep body and soul apart.