Nothing spoils a good party like a genius.

Serve the dinner backward, do anything - but for goodness sake, do something weird.

Good manners - the longer I live the more convinced I am of it - are a priceless insurance against failure and loneliness. And anyone can have them.

To get fifty people to a cocktail party in New York, you ask one hundred. In Hollywood, you invite twenty.

Seeing unhappiness in the marriage of friends, I was content to have chosen music and laughter as a substitute for a husband.

[On Hollywood:] I had gone there expecting to see parties that reflected the stock-in-trade of the movies - glamour. Instead, I found the same attitude toward parties that European peasants had for baths. It was something to be done methodically every Saturday night.

What is a bore? Maxwell definition: a vacuum cleaner of society, sucking up everything and giving nothing. How do you spot one? Bores are always anxious to be seen talking to you.