To deceive gracefully is the very essence of social life. One must start by deceiving oneself, and make a lifelong practice of deceiving others; if one does it well enough, in time one might even become an artist, the greatest illusionists of all.

The great point about money was to convert it as quickly as possible into something you could use or enjoy.

[... vastly different peoples live and work side by side but rarely come together, like the arms of an egg beater that] whirled independently and never touched, so that perhaps one arm never knew the other was there; yet they were together, turned by the same handle, and the cake was mixed by both.

English tradition debars from dinner-table conversation almost all topics that might interest the conversers and insists upon strict adherence to banalities.

They [zebras] looked like highly varnished animated toys.

To deceive gracefully is the very essence of social life. One must start by deceiving oneself, and make a lifelong practice of deceiving others; if one does it well enough, in time one might even become an artist, the greatest illusionists of all.

One of the stock Sydney jokes is of the census-taker who enquires: 'How many children have you, ma'am?' 'Two living and three in Melbourne.'