Should they whisper false of you, Never trouble to deny; Should the words they say be true, Weep and storm and say they lie.

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.

It turns out that, at social gatherings, as a source of entertainment, conviviality, and good fun, I rank somewhere between a sprig of parsley and a single ice-skate.

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

[Epitaph:] Involved in a plot.

It is that word 'hunny,' my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up.

Scratch a lover, and find a foe.