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.

[On James Gould Cozzens' By Love Possessed:] It is a vast enterprise encompassing all sorts of love, except, naturally, those branches which extend to Jews, Negroes, and people who have lost track of their great-grandparents.

Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it and it darts away.

[At the reception following her remarriage to Alan Campbell:] People who haven't talked to each other in years are on speaking terms again today - including the bride and groom.

Brevity is the soul of lingerie.

She can sit up and beg, and she can give her paw — I don't say she will, but she can.

Four things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.