Those who have mastered etiquette, who are entirely, impeccably right, would seem to arrive at a point of exquisite dullness.

[On William Lyon Phelps's Happiness:] It is second only to a rubber duck as the ideal bathtub companion. It may be held in the hand without causing muscular fatigue ... and it may be read through before the water has cooled. And if it slips down the drain pipe, all right, it slips down the drain pipe.

Every year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.

She was pleased to have him come and never sorry to see him go.

His books are exciting and powerful and — if I may filch the word from the booksy ones — pulsing.

Somebody was using the pencil.

Once I was coming down a street in Beverly Hills and I saw a Cadillac about a block long, and out of the side window was a wonderfully slinky mink, and an arm, and at the end of the arm a hand in a white suede glove wrinkled around the wrist, and in the hand was a bagel with a bite out of it.