I don't want to be classed as a humorist. It makes me feel guilty. I've never read a good tough quotable female humorist, and I never was one myself. I couldn't do it. A "smartcracker" they called me, and that makes me sick and unhappy. There's a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.

[On Dashiell Hammett:] ... he is so hard-boiled you could roll him on the White House lawn.

I don't mind anything that's written about me, as long as it's not true.

[On an actor who'd broken her leg in London:] Oh, how terrible. She must have done it sliding down a barrister.

Travel, trouble, music, art, a kiss, a frock, a rhyme -- I never said they feed my heart, but still they pass my time.

Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.

If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you.